Look at your hand under a magnifying glass once. You’ll stop calling anything “plain.”

Plainness is a function of distance. The back of your own hand, something you have looked at a million times, turns into landscape at ten times magnification: ridges, hairs, lines that chart how it has moved for years. Nothing was added to it; you just got close enough for detail that was always available to show up.

Get close to one ordinary thing this week. Use your phone camera zoomed all the way in on a leaf, a coin, your own skin. Two minutes is enough. Then try that same patience on a person or a place you had written off as uninteresting.