‘Group bonds strangers around the world’

It’s the best of Facebook. “The bar is pretty low,” I can hear you say.

Fair enough.

Let’s agree we’re not going to change someone’s opinion on vaccines and masks.

We really don’t care what you had for lunch.

But then there is this group. I don’t know how I became part of it.

It’s called, “View from My Window.”

I’ve come to learn that a Belgian woman, Barbara Duriau, started it as the pandemic was ramping up and we became a group of worldwide shut-ins.

The question was and is pretty simple. “What do you see when you look out your window?”

Almost three million people around the world have joined. So many of them have answered that simple question with a single photo.

There are jaw dropping views like the one posted from Papamoa Beach Bay of Plenty, New Zealand.

Or the snowy wonderland of Ketchikan, Alaska.

Egypt, Russia, Australia. They are all there.

The most meaningful and memorable usually come from windows that offer a modest view along with a short heartfelt story.

Such is the case as the woman who is grateful to get a peek of the sky from a tenement in Bangladesh.

One woman in Copenhagen posted a view of a single tree in front of a brick wall. She wrote, “It’s not my dream destination in Alaska, but after a brutal divorce and a lot of financial insecurity, this is me and my kids’ own home and I love it.”

This group is part looki-loo, part travelogue. I think the thing that keeps so many coming back at least once a day is the commonality.

We all look out our window. We all want pretty much the same things.

Shelter.

Something to be grateful for. I think it’s much like we do each week here, Dear Reader. We look out our window.

Or often, it’s about looking inside.

Our common experience.

I’m so glad to have had this year looking through the windows with you.

We’re each going to make it through the height of the holiday season in our own way.

Maybe you’re hunkering down, not leaving your house doing your best to dodge the latest COVID variant.

Maybe you’re nuts like my family and will attempt an international trip. (More on that next week.)

At some point, you’ll probably find yourself online. Before you go down the rabbit hole of everyone else’s perfect social media Christmas and family, you might have a look at this Facebook group.

Look out a stranger’s windows and, just as importantly, go look out yours.

There’s no bar to measure how good it is. No matter how modest or grand, there’s a gift waiting there simply because it’s yours.

And please know your window is part of a home that holds one of my precious gifts.

That gift is you.

Happy holidays, Dearest Reader.