Overcoming Familirritability

It is almost universal that spectacular things lose their power through familiarity. Like the second time I went to the Grand Canyon and thought, “Huh, I remembered it being bigger.” Familiarity often breeds, if not contempt, a kind of ­ irritation—either with the familiar thing, or with the wonder and awe of others who are beholding it for the first time. We might call this irritation by way of familiarity a case of familirritability.

We often speak of being desensitized to violence, but what about being desensitized to beauty and wonder, to the sheer miracle of life itself?