Sonder

On first glance there was nothing out of the ordinary about her. Yes, she was pretty, but there were other prettier girls. Yes, she was tall, but there were other taller girls. At first glance, the girl was completely ordinary. Yet everyone who saw her felt compelled to look again. Everyone who passed her saw the ordinary, and then the extra-ordinary.

On their second glance, people would see the fire in her eyes and the scars on her heart, the lives she had saved, the ones she had ruined, and the shadows of tears long dried up. People would see the love, loss, life and death that one single girl had brought to the world, when before they had only seen the colour of her hair and the type of clothes she was wearing. Those things didn’t matter, because the people who walked past her could see the difference that one single girl had made to the lives that she touched, and the passion that burned deep down in her soul.

Then something would happen to jolt them back to reality and they would almost forget about the girl, the one who burned brighter than a thousand stars, yet held a darkness deeper than endless night. But the world looked different to the people who saw her, as if by magic (which it may well have been) their eyes were opened to the world around them, and they saw the depth and the lives of their fellow humans. The girl faded to a vague memory, because the whole world was as beautiful as she had been, if you only bothered to look twice, once to see the body and deeper to see the soul, which was infinitely more complex and far more beautiful. I would have forgotten the girl altogether, if not for the fact that she was the first, the one who opened my eyes to the magic that surrounded me if I only bothered to look.