On Finding What You Weren't Looking For

I mentioned earlier that my son and I, both of us baseball enthusiasts, went to San Diego for the final games of the World Baseball Classic, the first truly international baseball competition. The event was significant in its own right, but I had an experience with my camera that reminded me of an important principle.

Prior to the championship game I noticed Tommy Lasorda on the sidelines. I figured that Tommy, longtime Dodgers manager and a baseball legend, was worthy of a picture. I pointed my digital camera at the crowd around Lasorda and got a nice shot of his portly frame.

The stadium announcer then declared that the first pitch would be thrown out by Hank Aaron, Major League Baseball's all-time leader in home runs, and that Aaron would be escorted to the field by Sadaharu Oh, manager of the Japanese team and the all-time home run leader in Japanese baseball. I knew enough baseball history to remember when Oh passed Babe Ruth's long-standing record, albeit in the Japanese professional league, creating quite a stir among baseball purists. What a unique moment to have Oh and Aaron on the same field.

That's when I looked down at my camera and realized that in shooting a picture of Tommy Lasorda I had unwittingly captured Oh and Aaron side by side, Aaron's arm draped affectionately around Oh. No offense to Tommy Lasorda but suddenly my photograph had evolved from a celebrity shot to capturing a moment brimming with history and human relationships. I had found something I wasn't even looking for.

The experience reminded me that life is serendipitous. Every moment carries within it the potentiality of richness and insight. Often it is about having the eyes to see what is truly there. We frequently give too much attention to the moments that are hyped and declared to be extraordinary. Give me instead the ability to see what I wasn't looking for at all. Those moments are gifts to be truly treasured and explored.