Today Is a Beautiful Day

There's no way around it--the world is a beautiful place today.  The sun is shining or rain is falling or the fog is embracing the land with its amazing presence.  There's wind blowing, the rivers are flowing, birds are singing, dogs are wagging their tails and little kids are giggling all over the place.

Perhaps something is happening in our lives that we're allowing to obscure our vision so that we can't see all the wonder and beauty.  If that's the case, then it's up to us to regain that vision, to find the ways that we can see much more, much more clearly.

Perhaps some person or persons are making our lives difficult, keeping us focused on negative things that we don't really want to be thinking about, but we don't seem to be able to avoid keeping our focus on the negative.  If that's the case, then it's up to us to shift our focus to the things that we know will help us to lift our spirits and to keep life in a positive perspective.

There always seems to be something that keeps us from seeing all the amazing beauty.  But right now, you and I both have a choice to make--we can keep on doing what we were in the process of doing, or we can stop, take a deep breath, and relax.  Then we can look around ourselves and see the amazing beauty, the remarkable symmetry, the astonishing complexity, the fantastic simplicity, of virtually everything that is in our worlds.  So many things, natural and man-made, give us so many views of the beautiful place that this planet is, and it would be quite a shame for us to waste such a beautiful day without even noticing the gifts of beauty that are always everywhere--including you!

As I experience it, appreciation of beauty is access to the soul.
With beauty in our lives, we walk and carry ourselves more lightly               
and with a different look in our eyes.  To look into the eyes               
of someone beholding beauty is to look through the windows

of the soul.  Anytime we catch a glimpse of soul, beauty is there;
anytime we catch our breath and feel "How beautiful!," the soul is present.

Jean Shinoda Bolen