If I had a dollar for each time someone said “Wow Jo! You are so cool!” to me, I would have a dollar. (Thanks for the $1 Mom!) Alas, I am the reigning queen of the local nerd herd.
Being fully committed to the #nerd4lyf way of living, I was embarrassingly jazzed to discover a set of Death Star ice cube molds for sale. (That’s a “Star Wars” thing for all of you cool people.) In my mind, they were going to be a fun little extra Christmas present for my husband (who also happens to be a serious geek). In reality, I was so excited when they arrived that I – errr I mean we opened the box up right then and there. We have had baseball-sized Death Stars floating around in our Yetis since that day.
One of my greatest joys is annoying my husband whenever possible by asking him questions that I genuinely want to know the answer to but also fully recognize that neither of us is qualified to answer. I can tell that he loves this habit of mine by the way he cups his hands together and stares intensely at them (he used to add the words “let me look into my crystal ball” whenever he did this, but he’s said that so often in response to my innumerable unanswerable inquiries over the years that it is now implied in the gesture).
So in true Joanna fashion, I started formulating an experiment in my head this weekend and felt the need to ask him what he thought would happen if we froze the molds in different freezers. He responded immediately with crystal ball hands / annoying gaze. Not to be defeated by his sarcastic and scientifically unsupportive paws, I cleverly retorted with an eye roll and nabbed his early Christmas presents so I could refill them once more. Experiment underway!
A few days later, I remembered my – ahem – his new ice molds in the freezers. I popped one of the frozen globes out of the mold and into my glass. Immediately I found myself in awe of the spherical wonder bobbing around my glass.
It was spectacular. Naturally I felt the need to ask my husband why it looked that way. He took Crystalline Ice Formations 101 in grad school in between his accounting and finance classes, so naturally it made sense to ask him this. He must have been somewhat impressed as well because he never busted out the crystal ball mits, but less surprisingly, he didn’t have a solid answer either. I took close up pictures and asked my kids to guess what they thought that it was. I have since asked the same of my friends on Facebook. Only one person has nailed the answer on the first try. The pictures I have shared have been close-ups, so it’s not obvious at a glance.
An ice cube. So ordinary and simple from a distance. But when you get closer, you can see that it is actually extremely intricate and beautiful.
These small frozen spheres are beautiful reflections of the intricacy of those around you. When you first see them, you may be amused. You may be bored. You may not give them any thought at all. They are just there. Ultimately they seem rather inconsequential in the mass scale of all things.
However when you look closer, you get a fantastically different perspective. You find something stunning and incredible. Something unexpectedly beautiful. Look deeper at those around you. Search for the spectacular parts that may not be evident at first glance.
Despite the surface that we see, these incredible intricacies can be found within each of us. Search for the cool within the nerdy, the uncommon in the common, and the beauty within the plain. Find the magic in the mundane. We often miss the details, and we fail to see the incredible art of the design until we look closer. Take a moment and gain a different perspective. You may find wonder in the most unexpected of places.
Love and light always – Joanna
Momentum of Joy 