Hello Friends,
It's good to be posting again. Did you miss me? I'm sure you did. I did too.
I am in a very rare, unexpressive mood today, but oddly enough, I am also in the mood to write. Which, I imagine, will not be a mood will be finding myself in many times more. Nevertheless, it is very uncommon of me to be short-winded, so this post will be quite the black sheep. And actually, that's exactly what it's about.
So I saw this picture the other day on National Geographic that truly captured my attention: http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/black-sheep/
Now, my immediate reaction was not, "oh wow, what a disgustingly hideous sheep" or "gosh, I feel bad for that thing." No, it was way more, "wow, that's an awesome sheep."Literally, this was my thought.
Dozens of the same white sheep, nameless and indistinguishable from each other in every way.
And one single, solitary black sheep. So unique, so unmistakably different from the rest, that you couldn't lose track of him, even if you tried. And then I realized, this was the first picture I had actually seen of a black sheep.
And after staring intently at this picture for quite some time, all I could do was wonder how the term "black sheep" ever came to be a negative thing, and why the black sheep of our world are ostracized and not venerated.
And then, consequently, it made me recall all of the times I've used the term in a negative fashion, often times in description of someone I would consider a misfit, for one reason or another. Then, I tried to remember the all the times I've used it to describe someone positively...
There weren't any.
But that was all before I had actually seen with mine eyes, a picture of a black sheep. I hadn't yet had the privilege of gazing on the beautiful creature. Because I could already envision what a black sheep looked like, which was just that: a black sheep.
But what I had not yet ever seen or envisioned was what a black sheep looked like among white sheep. And once I did, it just made me realize something very clearly. And that is, that if we're not black sheep, then we're just plain sheep.
And while looking at that picture, I challenge you to ask yourself the same question I asked myself:
Which one would you rather be?
I think I know my answer.
Yours Truly,
Brandon
