The Important Things in Life.

As I sat today watching, looking at the numbness in my best friends eyes I finally realized what is important in life, and noticed that my priorities are grossly out of order. Her father, practically mine also, passed away this morning of liver failure. He had been on the transplant list for six months. Though he was dying, his family still focused on the transplant, too absorbed in the hope that the list ensured to spend the last and final months with their husband, father, and grandfather too blinded by false hope to say their goodbyes. The disbelief and distress in all of their eyes was painful to experience and inspiring  to look at. As this blog is titled, "I'm Never Done With Looking", I thought it appropriate to point out that I have just started looking. Up until today, sitting in an ICU waiting room after the fact, knowing that there was no hope, I began to open my eyes, noticing the little details that usually would be overlooked. The simple comfort in the touch of a hand, and the subtle facial expressions that it brings out. The beauty in angst. The angst that is felt when one losses such a rock. Such an amazingly huge part of their lives. And finally I learned that absorbing every minute of time you have with someone like that, is the most important thing in the world. Not to focus on the possibilities that might happen in the future, but to live in the moment. To look, observe, soak up every bit of them until that perfect clone of them resides in your memory. Looking at life like this will undoubtedly change the way I view art and ultimately the world.

-Emily Martin