The beauty we don’t see is often the one closest to us. Whether due to a matter of perspective or a different visual ability, it is much easier for us to appreciate things that are far and distant compared to those that are familiar and everyday. We are all, even if young, affected by a certain form of presbyopia, as a result of which the things that happen “under our eyes” are the ones we notice the least.
Perhaps the real cause of the problem does not lie in a defect of our eyes, but rather in the lenses of the “obvious” and the “taken-for-granted” that we wear when looking at everyday things. These are things we know so well that we almost take them for granted; they are people, events, objects, or circumstances for which we have developed a thick crust of “preconceptions” or “prejudices” that make us blind and accustomed to what happens around us.
We have seen our wife so many times that we no longer feel the need to “look” at her again, but instead rely on the ideas we have formed about her. The same applies to our children, our friends, our home, our affections, and our experiences: they are so familiar that they become obvious, mute, banal, and flat.
Isn’t this what happened to the Master from Nazareth when he set foot in his hometown, as today’s Gospel of Mark tells us? The reaction of his fellow townspeople was as predictable as it was surprising: “Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” Obviously! No one – or very few – bothered to listen to what this very special Rabbi had to say, and even those who made the effort to listen still remained prisoners of prejudice. It is such a human dynamic that it influences both the first-century Palestinian man and the post-modern man of 2024.
It is that presumption of knowing everything in advance, so much so that the other loses their depth of wonder, surprise, and occurrence. It is as if the other loses their dimension of otherness to be forced into our somewhat narrow and petty schemes. “I already know what you are going to say, I know very well how you will behave, I know what you will do…” Aren’t these the phrases that, more or less unconsciously, mark our relationships, especially the most intimate and everyday ones? Isn’t this the most difficult challenge to overcome, to discover the beauty that lies, mute and humble, right under our noses?
It is strange: in Mark’s words, the Master is the only one still capable of being amazed (“He was amazed at their lack of faith”), as if, even in the face of rejection and misunderstanding, He did not lose His gaze capable of being questioned and amazed by what was around Him.
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