While sitting in a small, dimly-lit coffee shop, my eye is caught by a small decorative pillow sulking in the corner on a long wooden bench. Its poor, lonesome stares go unnoticed as it watches black, white, tall and short people fill the shop and leave again without lending it any more attention than a few quick glances. Does no one understand his meaning, his purpose? A warm pillow, knit together for the sole purpose of comforting them, keeping them warm, laying by them when no one else is there. He only wants to provide them love and comfort, yet somehow they have all misunderstood this purpose, changing him to be merely something they look at and analyze. Is that pillow pretty enough to sit in this brown, crowded coffee house? Do his blue colors and square shape match the beauty we want to accomplish in this corner shop? Person by person pass by—one after another, after another, after another—all judging from a distance, rating the beauty of his speckled pattern and teal blue polka dots. Day after day the sad pillow enters the same dull routine, watching as he doesn’t match the intangible expectations and standards of all those around him. Is this not the world humanity has created? Are they not both the pillow and the people at the same time, in their everyday lives: Analyzing the worth of others as if it’s their only purpose? An innocent creation, made only for the intention of loving others is somehow turned into the loneliest of them all.

A man who looks much like the pillow sits at the opposite end of the shop. He wears a stained T-shirt and holds scratched guitar in his hand as he strums a pattern of chords. A beautiful melody echoes from his instrument as he quietly hums lyrics to himself with no one there to listen to the words he created. He is a lonely man, flourishing with talent and potential; yet he goes unnoticed because they as a people would rather not use up the effort to allow themselves to truly know someone or something for who they are. They would rather assume that they already know them based on a singular glance. Both the pillow and the man are the same. They hold the ability to bring us joy and offer us gifts. It is time for us to begin seeing the beauty in the world that can easily pass us by.