-- Kenneth Patchen
It's easy to miss the world's beauty. We're so busy, we rush everywhere, we've got so much to do. Who's got time for beauty? The world doesn't care. It just keeps on being beautiful whether we're paying attention or not. And we keep on missing it.
Then comes your vacation, and you head off somewhere that's suppose to be incredibly beautiful -- Hawaii, Alaska, the Grand Canyon -- somewhere where the beauty is so friggin' awesome that there's no way you can miss it! We need extreme pretty, or we so no pretty at all. We need a coat-of-many-colors sunset on the beach in Bali to awaken us from our internal mental chatter and our aesthetic stupor. Maybe the fancy drink with the little umbrella helps, too.
And then you're back home, and the beauty gets posted on Facebook, and that's pretty much that.
What you forget is that it's beautiful wherever you are today. The only question is: Do you have a mind beautiful enough to see it? Mr. Rogers was right -- "it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood" every damn day! No matter what your neighborhood. No matter which day. It's that old "beauty is in the eye of the beholder thing," and like most bumper sticker wisdom, it still rings true.
The challenge is simple -- see beauty. See pretty. See it everywhere, everyday. Right here, right now. Big apples and all. And appreciate it. See it in the dandelion that blooms through the crack in the sidewalk, in the thunder clouds that roll in from the west, in every wild and free outburst of nature that outshines the neon, that buckles the concrete, that hides in the shadows of an inky, dark night.
It's there, even when at first you don't see it. Nature is one aspect of it, your soul is another. Beauty, both skin deep, and deeper and deeper on into infinity. Not to be missed. Not for one day. You've missed way too much already. Sleepers awake! A pretty world awaits.
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