Sentinel over a busy intersection

Life grows here
Toronto, ON
December 2018
This photo originally shared on Instagram

In a window overlooking the busy corner of Yonge and Davenport, someone I don't know takes care of the plant you see here. It's been a busy day here at the Toronto office. I come here weekly to work on an ongoing project with some very brilliant people, so my days here are action-packed, stuffed with learning, and immensely fun.

I move fast from place to place when I'm here, rarely stopping to appreciate the environment I'm in. That needs to change, because this building is historic in its own right, an architectural marvel that's played host to some of the music and media industry's brightest stars. And now I get to work here. Neat.

For a place that was the favorite rehearsal space of a little band known as the Rolling Stones, you might wonder why it was a plant in a window - and not, say, the concert hall 25 steps that way - that caught my eye as I raced to my train home at the end of the day. I wonder, too, because what grabs my brain at any given moment is as much a mystery now as it first was when I was a kid, slowly realizing there was this creative thing burning inside me.

Whatever the origin, I zeroed in on the juxtaposition of this simple - or, perhaps, not-so-simple - and largely ignored plant standing sentinel in a window high above an impossibly busy urban intersection. It felt like a time-out, of sorts, a quiet reminder that despite the chaos all around us, there are tiny spaces all around us that offer refuge from it all. We just have to look for them.

And when we do, maybe we'll want to thank those unknown people who care for them, and ensure there's always a place for us to go when the planet feels like it's spinning too quickly.

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