The Gift of Seeing

I made the mistake of arriving in the Vietnamese hill station of Sapa on a Friday, when it seemed half of Hanoi had already arrived for a weekend getaway and so had filled all the hotels.  Fortunately, after about two hours I found a place to stay on a road leading out of town.  This hotel was full, but they had an unused room of sorts on the roof that they’d rent me for $5/night.  While waiting at the reception desk for someone to find a key, I turned around and saw this man standing on the balcony.  The lush mountains drew the attention of us both, but in my case so did the scene of a solitary man gazing out at them.

Here’s a quote from a novel by C.S. Lewis called Till We Have Faces.

“And for all I can tell, the only difference is that what many see we call a real thing, and what only one sees we call a dream.  But things that many see may have no taste or moment in them at all, and things that are shown only to one may be spears and water-spouts of truth from the very depth of truth.”