You might look at this photo and wonder why I've chosen to post something blurry, uninteresting, and ill-composed. Well, I'm about to tell you a story. So put on your slippers, curl up next to a big shaggy dog with a cup of tea, and get ready for story time. And try to bear with me.
For the past year or so, I have woken up some mornings wondering where the first quarter of my life has gone. I know, I know, I'm still young. But hear me out. I have 4 younger siblings (the youngest being 10), so I still have the opportunity see the grace of a child's imagination and blind faith on a pretty regular basis. Some days I feel as if I was believing in Santa Claus and playing hide and seek last week, and then woke up the next day with a ring on my left hand, wondering how much to contribute to my 401k.
So, to my story about the photo. As a few posts have mentioned before, I spent some time in
Ireland in April. I was browsing through the (thousands) of photos from that trip tonight while relaxing on the couch, and I came across this one in particular. I forgot I had taken it. In honesty, I had forgotten that this particular moment in time had taken place at all.
I was in a bus, traveling through the Irish countryside and wilderness, en route from one scenic small town to another. I wish so much that I had been in a vehicle that I could have stopped to take another photo. But such is the beauty of fleeting moments; their existence is dependent on their impermanence.
This photo was taken as I whipped my camera out of my lap to snap it, just in time, before the bus turned a bend and I could never turn back to see this, ever again. How happy I am that I was not napping, as I am prone to do on long rides in a car or bus.
After driving for over an hour through deserted, overgrown forests that resembled something out of Lord of the Rings, a little stone bridge took our big old bus over the tiny babbling brook you see in this photo. Overgrown with vines, brush, and numerous plant life that would seemingly be impenetrable on foot, I saw what appears to be a white smudge in the center of that photo. Standing there, drinking from the brook. It almost glowed, although the day was overcast and misting rain down from a matte grey sky. Look at that white smudge, and try to see what I saw.
That, my friends, is a unicorn. And I will argue this as fact until the day that I die.
You can choose to think that some pristine white horse managed to be standing in the middle of nowhere in a fairytale book forest, and no one else saw it. But some days, when my commute is doubled because of a train delay, or when my workload at the office seems never ending, or when that window I forgot to close allowed the afternoon's torrential downpour to unleash its fury all over my bed....
I'm going to choose to believe in unicorns.
