Blog #80 We Didn’t Even See It

Another story from my excellent trip to Montreal in August 2019:

I’m a bit old-fashioned in some ways, and one of those is to send postcards to loved ones from the places I visit. I was on a summer trip to Montreal with my college buddies, and I wanted to send my children and my mother a postcard. I bought the stereotypical touristy postcards, filled them out, and wanted to mail them from the city, not when I got home. I think that part of the whole postcard experience is that it gets mailed from the site. So just throw it in the mailbox right? In the United States, we can spot that blue mailbox anywhere and everywhere. They’re on the corners and we see them in plain sight. Driving around Montreal, we just couldn’t find one. Friday went by, Saturday went by, and it wasn’t until late Saturday afternoon when I finally spotted one. We ran out of the car real quick and threw the postcards in. How come I didn’t see them earlier? Why did I miss it? The answer lies in that we just did not know what we were looking for. We were looking for something else. The
box just looks different.

This happens in life and schools all the time. We are looking for one specific thing, but maybe there is a better way. Maybe somebody has another idea that can work just as fine, if not better. Maybe we are not seeing “the mailbox” because we do not know what we are looking for? We are shooting for a specific target, yet maybe we do not know what that target is just yet. Yet being the important word. If we just keep looking, we will find it.

We need to have our minds open, as well as our eyes and ears when looking to accomplish a task because maybe there is just a better way or a different type of mailbox. The postcard arrived at my home just fine and my children enjoyed getting it. Keep your eyes and ears open because what you are looking for might be right in front of you and you don’t even know it.