We have a city park, it really isn't much but I like to walk through it from time to time, as I often do some of my best thinking when I'm just walking and experiencing.
Each year, the city puts up all kinds of lights throughout the park for Christmas and at night, it really is kind of lovely to walk through. I remember always wanting to walk through it when I was younger but my family didn't think it was worth it "you can see all the lights from the streets as we drive by, can't you?" they would say. they didn't understand the value of just walking through and watching.
Part of it is the people, as it is the one time when the park actually has a steady stream of people walking through it. For most of the rest of the year, it is usually just overlooked. But most of all, I love looking around and seeing just how diverse the iconography around me actually is.
Most would never realize it, but the images I saw were truly global. There was Inuit, Mesopotamian, Celtic/Norse, Victorian England, and Czarist Russia. I know most will never realize the vast collection of images that surround them nor will most of them ever grasp their meanings.
But I know them, I know their histories and their origins. Seeing it all around me...it makes me happy. I see the culmination of so many peoples, so many diverse thoughts and cultures, all brought into one single amalgamate.
Most will never see this, but I do, each and every time I walk through that park, and it warms me. I only wish more people would be interested in it and realize what exactly it all means. For it gives me hope. In spite of all our hatreds and bigotries and wars that we humans rage against one another, here is one time when the diversity of humanity is made as one. Here is hope for a future of my species.
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