The reality of glass

He had been in this house for over 11 years and not once had he cleaned the windows. The view from within was smeared with the build-up of dirt from the years of never cleaning. He believed the view he saw was the true view, but it wasn’t. The view was obscured by the build-up of dirt, colours were dulled, outlines feint, the blue sky not as crystal clear as it was. Then one day he cleaned the windows. He sprayed them with window cleaner and rubbed and rubbed until his arm ached. He looked at the duster and was amazed at how much dirt it had picked up. All the while he believed that the dirt was on the outside when it was on the inside. It was what was inside that was making him see things differently not what was outside. Cleaning the windows had changed his whole view. Now he could see sharp, straight lines, colours leapt into his eyes making them widen as far as they could to capture the true beauty that was outside, a true beauty he had been missing all these years. He realised that it was not what was outside that stopped him from seeing the beauty of the world but what was inside that mattered most.