Roman Price posted:

What Are You Missing?

A man in Washington DC started to play the violin; He played a number of pieces for 43 minutes.

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds, then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first tip: a woman threw the money in and without stopping, continued to walk.

A few minutes later, a man leaned against the wall to listen. Then looked at his watch and walked on. Clearly he was late for work.

In the 43 minutes the musician played, 7 people stopped and stayed for a while. 27 gave him money. He collected $32. When he finished playing, silence took over and nobody noticed it. No one applauded, there was no recognition.

None knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the top musicians in the world. He played some of the best pieces ever written, with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

This was organized by the Washington Post as a part of a social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty?

Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

My personal conclusion to this experiment; Life is really simple, we do a great job of making it complicated. There is beauty all around us, we just have to be open to it.

For the entire article follow the link below,
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007