Article September 15, 1997 Issue

To love is to live!

Fenella Bennetts

We were visiting the Acropolis in Athens with a young relative. Just before the final climb to the famous Parthenon, we paused for a drink and turned around to find the eleven-year-old sitting on a stone, staring gloomily at the ground. We were amazed, as she had been dancing with excitement about the adventure for weeks. I asked her what was the matter, and with a heavy heart she sighed, "I don't know why people come all this way to see the Parthenon and then leave trash all over the place!"

Her eyes were indeed firmly fixed on the ground and the trash. She had anticipated this moment for so long, reading and learning all she could about Greece and its history, myths, and legends, but her mental pictures hadn't included soda cans and fast-food wrappers! So I asked her to look up and tell me what she was going to see when she had climbed to the top. "The Parthenon!" was the joyful answer. "Well, you've come all this way, too, and now you can make a choice: what have you come here to see—the trash or the Parthenon?" She didn't need a second reminder! She was off, and we had a job to keep up with the bright pink shirt, bobbing way ahead of us as she celebrated her moment of discovery.

It's true that what we experience is determined by our circle of vision. In fact, two people can find themselves in identical situations and have entirely different experiences—as this little verse I recall indicates:

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Keep it simple; God is Love