Abigail Thomas, 4 loves

To the effect of what C. S. Lewis says, “human mind prefers to praise or dispraise rather than to define and describe,” it seems that behavioral values replace descriptions. The value is taken as all the appreciator needs to know and perhaps is considered the essential description as it is. The essential sensation and pleasure of love is essentially all the appreciator needs for consideration.
There have been times when I step out of a building and the outside is great, the people are great, and I have a great warmth of good humor. In those moments all I know is a wonderful satisfaction of where I’m at, that’s all I know or feel. All I know I step outside and I’m heading to somewhere, and I know the journey just across campus will be beautiful, pleasant and thrilling. I’m not alone there are people all around me on a journey as well and most enjoying it as much as me. The stepping out into the great outdoors is a kind of release or relief. This morning I even saw a runway. The morning was the welcome to the anticipated new day and cycle(s). I was on the road that starts behind Potomac South and goes straight through past the York dorms, SU, the library and the Ferguson Center parking lot. From way back looking straight along that road from the Potomac end I can see the cars running over Warwick perpendicular with the road I’m on. It looks like a runway, I walk the road I’m on among the buildings to(wards) off-campus and beyond.

“Of course many natural objects—trees, flowers and animals—are beautiful...The man who is distracts them. An enthusiastic botanist is for them a dreadful companion on a ramble. He is always stopping to draw their attention to particulars.”

Some particulars are to be distracted by. I remember when I was little I watched the movie Antz, which was a kids animated film of a story with ants. There was a scene were the ants were on a picnic blanket and the ants were so small the ants were on a different perspective scale. The ants couldn’t really tell where they were or what was causing all the dangerous phenomenon (fly swatter and getting stuck in gum on the bottom of someone’s shoe) around them in comparison to the larger human perspective scale that could definitely comprehend the surroundings and causes. That scene and other scenes -- “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,” “Magic School Bus” and “Men in Black” (the scene were the must be ginormous alien is playing with universe marbles and our universe is in one of those marbles) – made me think of how many size scales exist on earth alone among organism and their perspectives. From the tiniest bacteria to ants, to people, to whales in the great ocean. I was curious and would daydream about having Magic School Bus moments and wonder and try to figure out what would the world look like if I was the size of an ant or anything to that effect. Maybe when some of those distracting botanists are examining a particular of a plant, they are exercising their chigger-eye skills and trying to take in the great expansive view of a leaf. There could be fun water slides flowing down a leaf, and fascinating tiling and patterns of a leaf, or a horrific blank staring, black wholly face that belongs to a titan of a caterpillar that’s eating your playground leaf. It may be the small scale view and expanse of an ant but that leaf is not exactly a particular to be overlooked.