Truth lurks conspicuously in the periphery.
Last night, I found time for something I haven’t done in months: pondering. The days’ demands satisfied, I sat for nearly an hour on my bed and at my desk, casting my thoughts upon the course of my life. Truly have I come to appreciate “The Purloined Letter” by Poe:
“There is a game of puzzles,” he resumed, “which is played upon a map. One party playing requires another to find a given word –the name of town, river, state or empire –any word, in short, upon the motley and perplexed surface of the chart. A novice in the game generally seeks to embarrass his opponents by giving them the most minutely lettered names; but the adept selects such words as stretch, in large characters, from one end of the chart to the other. These, like the over-largely lettered signs and placards of the street, escape observation by dint of being excessively obvious; and here the physical oversight is precisely analogous with the moral inapprehension by which the intellect suffers to pass unnoticed those considerations which are too obtrusively and too palpably self-evident. But this is a point, it appears, somewhat above or beneath the understanding of the Prefect. He never once thought it probable, or possible, that the Minister had deposited the letter immediately beneath the nose of the whole world, by way of best preventing any portion of that world from perceiving it.”
The great truths of life lie ever beneath our noses, yet somehow we manage to overlook them. Perhaps to discover these great truths, we need only refocus our vision.
Entasis 