You Are the Eyes of thew World

Today when I was at my parents house they were trying to put together the lettuce dryer. It is a bowl with many moving parts. My step mom was convinced that it's only function was to dry lettuce. Yet, we found all these other pieces and were not sure what they were for. As it turns out, this "salad dryer" is also a vegetable grater and shredder, has a julienne blade and it is really efficient. They had the thing for about 5 years and never noticed it's uses.  No matter how good a tool is, if you don't notice it, it is of no value no matter what utility it may potentially possess.
I took in this experience as a metaphor for life. There are countless resources abounding that go unnoticed. In a single moment of conscious awareness, we were able to figure out there are many uses for our one gadget. Yet, it was just a few moments later we discussed that the microwave in my parent's kitchen is also much more useful than they had known. It doubles as a convection oven and my dad found this out from my brother ten years after its installation. I pondered aloud, what a few moments of conscious awareness taught us within the confines of a tiny kitchen, then surely in the world at large there must be greater examples of missing what is right in front of our eyes.
When going through life on auto-pilot, it is easy to miss the little things that bring ease or beauty to the world. But, imagine drawing your conscious awareness more frequently into what you were doing. Even if you just do this once a day to start, imagine what you can wake up to find?
I will close with a Grateful Dead lyric from Eyes of the World, 

"Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world,The heart has it's beaches, it's homeland and thoughts of it's own.Wake now, discover that you are the song that the mornin brings,But the heart has it's seasons, it's evenins and songs of it's own."