I am slowly coming to understand this important truth – that oldness is nowhere and newness is everywhere. To take one example, every day is a totally new day. The sunrise each morning makes the trees shine in a slightly different way than they ever did before, and every breeze blows somewhat differently from all the yesterdays. Also, totally new things will happen to me today – the way a person smiles at me, the way some students stand beside me at an assembly, the way sunlight lands on my shirt at recess. Even every moment is brand new. As I type this paragraph, new dust motes are scattered on my desk in arrangements that have never existed before, and the shadows from my fingers fall on the keyboard in a completely original way. What is most astonishing for me to realize is that each thought is utterly new each moment. The exact thought I am thinking right now has never been thought before – in the entire history of the human race. It’s startling – almost scary – to realize that I live in a universe of such breathtaking newness.
