Deep Thoughts from a Mountaintop

Last week my husband and I took a much-needed vacation and spent six days in the beautiful Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which sits partly in Tennessee and partly in North Carolina. On the day we arrived, we went to the top of the 32-story "Space Needle" in Gatlinburg to have a look around.

Here is one picture I took from the top:

The large mountain in the background is Mount LeConte. From this view, it just looks like a dull hulk of a hill, though it is over 6,500 feet tall. Nothing interesting about it, right? But the next day, the two of us went on an impromptu hike up the face of LeConte. It took us over seven hours to complete the ten-mile round-trip walk.

Here are the pictures I took on LeConte:

Neat, huh?

You may be wondering what the point of all this is. Well, when we were done with the very, very strenuous hike, my mind went all philosophical on me and I started thinking about how we so often judge people from afar based on first impressions, kind of like I did with the mountain--because from a distance, it didn't look like anything was there but a bunch of trees. Only when we got up close to the mountain did I see the beauty that had previously been hidden from my sight.

So the next time you see somebody and think, "They look like ____, so they must be ____" without bothering to get to know them first, stop yourself. Do you really know what this person is like? Maybe you should find out by getting to know them better. It won't hurt to try!