Joining The Dots

I'm longsighted. I can make out the leaves on trees two hundred yards away but I have to wear glasses to read.

Similarly, I can understand the most complicated of philosophical arguments, find the deepest of metaphors, but I struggle to grasp the simplicity of a rose in the foreground.

I'm coming to realise that I have never truly seen my emotional landscape. I have been staring at it, like one of those pictures hidden within dots, thinking that the truth of my feelings is something deep, some great mystery. When really it's so simple: my feelings are the dots.

I remember trying to explain the language of music to someone once. He couldn't understand why, after G, the notes return to A again, and how that relates to the way the notes appear on the stave. It drove me mad trying to explain it. But this morning, as I sat in a coffee shop listening to the piped piano music, his confusion finally made sense. Because how can seven little notes create all the music in the world? How can feelings as simple as sadness, anger and love fill our hearts to bursting?

But they do. The truth of it is right in front of me.