The Familiar

Ha, that title totally sounds like a band name.

I have lived in the same house in Dallas, TX for 21 full years as of sometime next month, or at least my mom has. I have intermittently moved out because of college or stuff like that, but never for more than a few months. It's still my "home," if you know what I mean. Anyways, I was driving today and I realized something funny.
There's a stretch of highway about a half a mile from my house, one of the most important highways in the city. I am obviously very well-versed in this city, so you'd think that I drive over this stretch of highway all the time, especially since it's by my house. I often use this particular highway to get back to my house or go from my house, because it's just that close and is a major transit point.
Typically, though, I get off the highway to go to my house before I get to the part of the highway which is closest to my house. I exit right before this stretch coming from either direction, so I never drive over it.
Well, this week I'm staying at someone else's house nearby, but not close enough to take the same exit. So, tonight, driving back from Kristen's house, I had to drive over this one stretch of highway that I never see to get home.
It was like I had never been here before. Here was this major transit within walking distance of my house I had hardly ever seen before on a road I used almost daily for 21 years that was practically foreign soil.
It's amazing how something so close can be so unknown.
It reminds me that it is impossible to know everything about anything at all.
I could spend my entire life studying a speck of dust and never know every atom or what it was going to do next, much less an entire city.
It makes me excited.
I tend to get bored with things easily.
But there is such a possibility that the pursuit of knowledge is an infinite, endless pursuit. If you're actually a living breathing being, and not just an apathetic machine, every year and every holiday season and every visit to the town you thought you had pegged should change you and make you see something new.
You don't have to believe that Disney-esque crap about enjoying the small things or finding your own special personal peace. Stopping to smell the flowers is overrated, because flowers are far from the mot interesting things there are.
There are things within your range of sight this very second that are fascinating, and you haven't even considered it.

Don't ever call yourself my friend and say you're bored with life. I'm excited enough about little stretches of highway and wondering how scientists discovered that dogs enjoy the taste of dog food.

Being baffled and confused and lacking knowledge is fun.