Noticing Beauty (and why we can't have nice things)
All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. Anatole France
I'll be honest here - I'm in a post(ish) pandemic funk, brought about by changes both thrust on me and ones that I've been waiting for (see the quote above). I imagine I'm not alone here, so it was 100% serendipitous that I found myself listening to a podcast on noticing beauty this past week. The podcast is called A Drink With a Friend and the episode is titled simply Ordinary Beauty #1. According the episode notes, noticing beauty is a habit and is actually mandatory if we want to live any kind of deep and fulfilling life. Like everyone, I find it easy to get bogged down in the minutiae of everyday life; it's much harder to stop and reflect on what's beautiful, both big and small. The following is my attempt to document a few things that gave me a bit of respite from being human this week. Please note - I'm not a photographer, nor do I claim to be one. I'm also not the person to ask to take pictures, mostly because I do try to enjoy the moments I'm in, and cannot remember to pick up the camera. But I get an "A" for effort on this project, if only because I'm grading myself (not unlike a certain high school class I received mostly undeserved high marks in, because we self-graded all of our assignments!)...
Just a collection of ordinary beauty...
Every time I've raced my shadow
When the sun was at my back
It always ran ahead of me,
Always got the best of me.
But every time I've raced my shadow
When my face was toward the sun,
I won.
Shel Silverstein
Brotherly love, my intrepid explorer, motherly love and my favorite double-cowlick...
Yep, the book IS better than the movie (and the movie was damn good!)
Remember, there's always a light at the end of the tunnel...
But sometimes, this is the only appropriate word for what you find there.
Finally, I'll leave you with this: It'll all be alright in the end, my friends. If it ain't alright, it ain't the end. Them's my words of wisdom, or I may have stolen them from somewhere. Writers have a tendency to do that. Beware - they also lie too, but at least we don't litter - well, at least this one doesn't. Seriously people, this is why we can't have nice things... let's do better!
What ordinary beauty have YOU noticed lately? Feel free to comment below...