The Things I Hope I Never Get Used To
The Things I Hope I Never Get Used To
A quiet promise to keep noticing the things that make an ordinary life feel almost unbearably beautiful.
I hope I never get used to sunsets.
Not because they’re rare, but because they’re reliable.
Every evening they arrive as if the sky has remembered to keep its oldest promise. Some people barely look up anymore. They keep driving. Keep scrolling. Keep talking.
I hope I’m always the person who stops for thirty seconds just to watch the world catch fire before it goes dark.
The Pacific refuses to let me sleepwalk.
I hope I never get used to the cold bite of the Pacific.
The way the water shocks every thought out of my head. The way it reminds me that being awake is sometimes uncomfortable before it’s exhilarating.
There are easier oceans. Warmer oceans. But this one makes me earn the feeling of being alive.
The scent of a life beginning again.
I hope I never get used to the smell of fresh coffee drifting out of an open café door on an early morning walk.
It smells like possibility. Like conversations waiting to happen. Like pages about to be written.
Dogs running across the beach as if nothing has ever broken their hearts.
I hope I never get used to dogs running across the beach with complete faith that every day is the best day they’ve ever lived.
There is something holy about joy that doesn’t know it’s being watched.
Music is better when it still has fingerprints on it.
I hope I never get used to live music spilling into the street.
A voice cracking on the high note. A guitar just slightly out of tune. Strangers swaying together without knowing each other’s names.
It’s imperfect in all the ways that remind me why perfection has never been the point.
Every unopened book is a door with warm light underneath it.
I hope I never get used to the first page of a new book.
That tiny pause before the first sentence. The delicious uncertainty of not knowing who I’m about to become for the next few hundred pages.
The kind that reminds you your body has been fluent in a language your mind keeps trying to translate.
I hope I never get used to a really good kiss.
The kind that quiets the world for a moment.
Mostly, though, I hope I never get used to this life.
Not because it’s extraordinary every day.
Because even the ordinary deserves to be noticed.
I’ve spent enough of my life rushing toward what’s next to know that wonder isn’t something you find.
Wonder is something you protect.
Maybe that’s what growing older has really taught me.
Not how to stop being amazed.
How to refuse to let amazement become background noise.
Familiarity is wonderful.
Indifference is tragic.