Sharing Beauty
Walking into the park in the early morning I came upon three Japanese visitors on their way out. Beaming smiles they kept repeating in heavily accented English: “beautiful, beautiful, beautiful” while pointing over toward a long row of tall bushes. Looking closer in the direction they were pointing I saw three deer munching their breakfast – two young bucks and a fawn. The visitors were giddy they were so delighted with the scene. I smiled back, acknowledging the sweet moment we shared and thanked them for making sure I didn’t miss it.
As we each moved away from the experience – me to my walk, them into the rest of their day, and the deer to their next course – I flashed on a similar incident I had experienced a few years before.
I was working down the coast at the time. Whenever I felt particularly stressed I would take a break to reboot at the ocean. On this particular day I was sitting by myself at one of the picnic tables eating lunch. The beach was sparsely populated that day with 3 or 4 others, also alone.
Without warning, two whales suddenly and dramatically breached right in front of me, not far out from the shore. It was electrifying to witness. The moment felt as though time stood still. As the whales continued their playtime while progressing down the shoreline, I rose to follow – enthralled by their graceful power rocketing up out of the surf.
Quite naturally those of us scattered along the beach, previously isolated in our own worlds, transformed into a tight little pod united by our fascination with this beautifully dynamic display. Like kids following the ice cream truck, we were mesmerized by the mighty whales and, like the Japanese visitors, were drawn to share the experience.
We didn’t know names or anything about each other and, in the case of the Japanese, barely spoke the same language. Yet there was a spontaneous connection made in this moment of grace before we each moved on and back into our lives.
Reflecting on both of these instances it makes me wonder if there isn’t an inherent instinct in us – a reflex – to reach out and share beauty and magical experiences with others.
Let the beauty of what you love, be what you do. – Rumi
If beauty is something that naturally brings us together, how can we make more of it in our lives? How can we transform a mundane, daily activity into a thing of beauty? What would it be like if our interactions were more graceful and less adversarial – if we looked for connections rather than differences?
What if, instead of pulling out our cameras to take a picture to share with our virtual friends, we sought out another human being – a stranger – to share a moment of beauty with? What if we took the time to simply be still in nature and appreciate her surprises?
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6 Responses to “Sharing Beauty”
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I am a speaker, teacher, writer, and artist working at the convergence of self-care, spirituality, and self-expression.
A Creative Conspirator - an inciter of whatever makes you come alive, an excavator of buried gifts and talents, a fresh breeze that fans the smoldering embers of abandoned creativity. Read More>
Sometimes we don’t know how lucky we are until someone or a small group of Japanese tourists show us. 🙂
It really is true. We have beauty all around us and we don’t notice it. With a little hard work we can improve our perspective by using it to help us look for things that we are thankful for in our lives. The more open we can be to the beauty in our lives the more joy we can experience.
Yes, Karl, it’s often the “outsider” that brings into focus what we take for granted. Deer on the trail is not uncommon for me – which I always enjoy – but they lifted it up to a magical moment.
Beauty, peace, calm, connection to the natural world. These are things we are completely cut off from sometimes as we go about the business of our lives. To just be able to stop and take in those beautiful moments is a gift. To share them with others is truly giving a gift.
And they are all around us. Patient, steadfast and oblivious to our busy-ness
I live for beauty
And It is magical when shared with others
Beauty shared = love
Thank you. !!!
Thanks a lot for the blog post.Really looking forward to read more. Much obliged.