A Horse of a Different Color

1867 Stabben Lighthouse, Florø, Norway.

Every so often something comes across the radar that is so totally unexpected, my jaw drops to the floor.

As you know by now, I love to collect things...weathervanes, water towers, gable stones, windmills and...lighthouses.  But this one I didn't expect.

There she sits out in the middle of the fjord (the last day of our Hurtigruten mail-boat sea voyage).  She's not on the rocky coastline.  She's not tall, sleek, or striped.  But she's a lighthouse, nonetheless, in what can be treacherous waters, which is the point.

In Dutch, when you talk about a horse of a different color, you're talking about een vreemde eend in de bijt = a strange duck in the pond.  You can say that again.

That got me thinking about all those things that are stranger or more different than what we expect.  We met 3 of our blogging couples while in Norway and told them they were better than we expected.  Not different.  That was fun.  Sometimes, however, we 'see' things in our mind's eye and think we know ahead of time what something/one is before we see them.  In those situations reality can throw us for a loop.  We've made assumptions that simply aren't true and really mess ourselves up. Hopefully we grow up and learn from the error of our way.

In fact, when we give our minds the space for anything but assumptions, it's amazing how big our world becomes with all its wonderful variations.  Variations on a theme are there to make us better, 'bigger' people, I believe, more open to all the creative options.  More capable of accepting what's different.  Accepting what's not like us.  Would there have ever been an 'ugly duckling' in that pond if we had learned to be more open?  Or a Muslim.  A Jew.  Gay.  Single mom.  Or whatever distinguishes something/one as 'different.'  We name things that are different from us, you know.  Especially if we don't understand them.

Remember when President Kennedy almost didn't get elected because he was Roman Catholic?  Or how devasted we were the first time we heard of someone famous getting divorced?  Sometimes it's not who we are but what we do.  The first time I saw Astrid eat every part of her apple except the stem, I stared at her with my mouth wide open.  Do people really do things like that?!

Funny thing is, I had a hundred things to tell you about our fabulous sea voyage along the Norwegian coastline.  Six days in and out of the fjords.  Where would I start?  HOW would I start!

Other things will come out over time, of course.  Fun things.  Glorious things.  But for right now, THIS is what rocked my boat.  A strange duck in the pond.  A horse of a different color.

[Speaking of color, you can see more of that here.  It's what Norway is known for.]