On a cold January day in 2007, world renown violinist Joshua Bell stood by the wall and a trash can in the Washington, DC Metro Station. He was dressed in common clothes but grasped a handcrafted 1713 Stradivarius violin worth 3.5 million dollars. For 45 minutes Joshua played intricate, difficult, and beautiful pieces on his violin. Many people simply hurried by. Most hardly even noticed. A few tossed a dollar to him but didn't stop walking. Only six people stopped to listen for a moment and only one recognized him. The interesting thing is that children wanted to stop and continued to stare as they were hurried on by a parent. Joshua had performed a concert three days earlier for an average of $100 per person. This day he made $32. When he finished playing there was no applause and no one even seemed to notice that he had stopped.
This was an experiment by The Washington Post to see is we perceive beauty in commonplaces at inappropriate times. Do we recognize it? Do we stop to appreciate it?
We rush through our lives only to wake up one day realizing we are at the end and forgot to stop and live. You really only have this day, this moment. Remember to look for the beauty of it.
