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# Habituation
- URL: https://www.smoothpebbles.org/habituation/
- Published: 2026-01-17T02:42:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-04T02:42:43.000Z
- Author: Richard Flanders

Miracles do not shout.  
They rush quietly unnoticed.  
  
Morning arrives  
light travels ninety-three million miles  
to fall without applause on the table,  
on the cup, energizing the planet  
We call it ordinary  
and move on.  
  
We are busy  
not with survival, not with wonder,  
but with rehearsals of old arguments,  
with looping anxieties,  
with the theater of thoughts  
that produce nothing and demand everything.  
  
Meanwhile, beneath the noise,  
a congress of cells convenes without sleep.  
Molecules maneuver with precision  
that would shame our proudest machines.  
Ions cross membranes thinner than belief.  
Proteins fold like origami sworn to duty.  
Errors are corrected before we ever notice danger.  
  
Each cell  
more intricate than a space shuttle,  
more reliable than our intentions  
asks for nothing.  
No recognition.  
No gratitude.  
Just conditions to keep going.  
  
And from this silent labor  
arises consciousness  
this impossible flame  
balanced on chemistry,  
this brief window  
through which the universe looks at itself  
and says nothing,  
waiting for us to speak.  
  
But we squander it.  
We spend thought like loose change  
on grievances, on schedules,  
on the dead weight of the trivial.  
We live as though awareness were cheap,  
as though being alive at all  
were not our rarest experience.  
  
Familiarity dulls the blade of astonishment.  
Habit guides the extraordinary  
to pass as background noise.  
The heart beats.  
The mind imagines.  
The cosmos holds.  
  
And we miss it  
not because it is hidden,  
but because it is constant.  
  
The tragedy is not that beauty fades,  
but that it persists  
while we are elsewhere,  
thinking useless thoughts,  
unaware that at this very moment  
miracles fuel an imagination  
that notices nothing of consequence.