Past the Posts, Toward the Peaks

I was walking through a more rural part of Atenas here in Costa Rica the other morning, sipping on a coffee that could probably start a tractor. I came across a fence line so crooked it looked like it had been built by a drunk pirate or someone who had argued with a level and lost. The posts were uneven, leaning this way and that, with some barbed wire clearly giving up halfway through their job.

And behind it, stood a cow.

Not just any cow. This one was majestic. She looked like she belonged in a coffee commercial, gazing into the distance like she was pondering life’s mysteries. I stopped and watched her for a few minutes, not because I’m a cattle whisperer or anything, but because she was staring through that jagged fence as if it wasn’t even there.

That’s when it hit me.

She didn’t care that the fence was crooked. She wasn’t staring at the chaos in front of her, nor was she trying to fix it. Her eyes were set beyond it. Past the fence. Toward the mountain that turned purple under the early sun, or the clouds rolling in like silent sheep across the sky. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the mess right in front of her.

We humans? We’re a different breed. We love a straight line. We obsess over symmetry. We complain when life’s fence posts aren’t spaced just right. We stare at the flaws, pick them apart, measure what’s missing, and talk ourselves into misery. All the while, the view we’re meant to enjoy waits patiently behind the mess we won’t look past.

That cow, bless her soul, knew something I sometimes forget. The world doesn’t need to be perfect to be beautiful. The point isn’t to fix every crooked board but to look through them. To shift where we focus.

Maybe the fence is life. Maybe it’s the baggage. Maybe it’s that job we hate but can’t quite leave. Or the wrinkles we stare at too long in the mirror. The missed opportunities, the disappointments, the plans that didn’t quite pan out.

But maybe, just maybe, the real beauty isn’t found by rearranging the fence. Maybe it’s by changing where we’re looking.