Sometimes we forget.

Lazy Saturday night and was browsing random sites, came across an interesting article on my sis' blog.

On a winter January morning in 2007, Washington Post decided to conduct an observational social experiment. The setting: A busy train station in Washington D.C. during on Friday morning at 8am. An unassumingly dressed young man takes his violin out of its case starts playing a classical tune unfamiliar to most people. And he does so for the next 45 minutes, just as any busker would. A scene so familiar to your urban city dweller who commutes almost every day in their adult life.

In the 45 minutes, only seven people stopped to "hang around" to listen to the violinist, but of course, one could only spare a minute, right? After all, we have reports to file, meetings to attend, emails to reply to, coffee to gulp down. But sometimes we forget. We forget that every day is different.

And the difference that day was that the young man Joshua Bell, a child prodigy who grew up to become a Grammy Award-winning violinist gracing the music halls where the lowest priced ticket was about US$100. The instrument was a violin crafted by Antonio Stradivari in 1713, with a price tag reported to be about US$3.5 million.

It's a sad story. But one that's needed to remind us that sometimes we forget. We forget to stop. We forget to listen. We forget about enjoying the simple beauty that life brings. We forget, but we never seem to forget to complain about life's monotony.

Read the complete story at WashingtonPost.com: Pearls Before Breakfast, 8 April 2007