Choosing to See Beauty

The image on this post is undeniably beautiful. It is of Nerja, on Spain's southeastern coast, with the Sierra Nevada (the mountains around Granada) in the background. So if you read the title of this post, you might be thinking that it's easy for me - who lives in Spain, which is such an incredibly stunning country (for the senses) - to say that you could or should choose to see beauty.

Nevertheless, I've found beauty on a dreary, rain-soaked day in the middle of the gray downtown of a medium-sized city, just as a few clouds allowed a small ray of sunshine to light up one small triangle on the wall of a building I happened to be looking at. I've found beauty sitting in my car during a traffic jam along a road construction area in the middle of horrendous August heat as I happened to look out the window to the rubbish occasioned by the construction, surrounded by dust and dirt, and wouldn't you know it, a wondrous purple flower had grown there ... just to delight my senses ... and to correct my momentarily failing belief in being able to find beauty everywhere.

Sometimes the beauty is auditory, if you happen to hear birds, perhaps the wind, or even an insect hustling to get home. Sometimes it comes through your sense of touch, as you stoop to pet the soft fur of a cat that has decided to wind itself around your legs on the middle of a city sidewalk. Sometimes beauty lies in thick, ominous storm clouds, and sometimes it lies in an inky black sky. And sometimes you are only able to find beauty if you remember to be present.

The point really is that it's not so much about what is out there, but about what you choose. Do you choose to see beauty, or do you choose to tell yourself that there is none? Either of these choices will lead you down a road, but I promise you, those are two very different roads that can make very different things of your life. Choose well. Choose for your inner well-being. Choose because you care for yourself.

Image: Nerja, Spain

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