A new perspective and appreciation.
Before, I was young; foolish, ignorant even.
I was like a barbarian at the banquet.
I gulped and guzzled; I ate without tasting.
I rushed through each experience like a tourist trying to see twenty-one European cities in two weeks and enjoying none of them.
Now, I'm a gourmet. I savour each day.
I taste the robustness of life, but not so hurriedly as to lose its delicate overtones.
Like the multiple layers of an onion, I slowly peel the layers of every day life, unveil the secrets of an undiscovered country, to see the world in a grain of sand, heaven in the eye of a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of my hand and experience eternity in an hour.