The Pause #3: 🍫 The Pyramid on 22nd Avenue

At least twice a week, I drive to a market to buy fresh produce for Romanicos. I always take the same route, along 22nd Avenue and then right on 20th Street.

Most days, although my body is on the road, my mind is somewhere else: thinking about what I need to arrange, solve, or create next.

But last week, I decided to pay attention. I chose to see this familiar road with intention.

On the corner, a man was preaching from the Bible. People passed him without slowing down, phones in hand, eyes on the crosswalk, already somewhere else. I watched them rush past him the way I usually rush past everything.

Then I looked to my left, and there it was: a building I had driven by hundreds of times, with enormous hieroglyphs carved into its walls and a pyramid rising from its roof.

Oh my God, I thought. How have I never noticed this before? What is a building like that doing in such a modest neighborhood?

I don’t know who created those carvings, what inspired the building, or how long it has been standing there. But it had been waiting for me to notice, patiently, the way old things wait, not asking to be seen, simply remaining visible for whoever finally slows down enough to look.

And then it struck me:

The world has not stopped offering us wonder; we have stopped looking.

A more personal question followed: How many things in my life have I missed because I wasn’t truly present?

Perhaps an opportunity. Someone who wanted to come closer. An experience already waiting to be lived, carved quietly into an ordinary day, unread because I was moving too fast to look up.

When we are children, everything is new. Even the ordinary can be extraordinary. I think of myself as a little girl, mixing colors for the simple joy of watching them change.

But as we grow older, we begin dreaming about faraway destinations or telling ourselves, I’ll do that when I finish this… when I accomplish that… when I finally have more time.

Meanwhile, we are missing our own backyard. We are missing the present, and the pyramid on the way to the market.

So I have made a decision: to be here. To open my heart again like that little girl with her colors, curious, unhurried, and willing to be astonished by something I have driven past a hundred times.

The man on the corner is probably still preaching today. The pyramid isn’t going anywhere. The wonder is still there.

The only question is whether I will look up.

This week, I invite you to take a familiar road with new eyes. What has been carved into your everyday, patiently waiting for you to notice?

With love,

Alejandra