A New Perspective – Beauty

Beauty will save the world.  I’m definitely with Dostoyevsky on this one.  There is beauty in the natural world, beauty in the human soul, beauty in the balance of the universe.  There is also beauty in reciprocity, kindness, and sacrifice. These things will save the world. And our hearts.

Some days, listening to the news, though, or even just looking around from the vantage point that is my life, beauty can be a hard thing to find.

Pockets of Light

A number of years back, I was struggling in the depth of a long-term darkness and desperately needed a new perspective.  Christmas was coming up, so I asked for a camera.  I hoped that if I could literally view the world in a new way, I might find some pockets of light.

My Dad came through with a camera and so the adventure to see the world in a new way began.  Wonder opened up to me.  There are worlds and worlds of marvelocity (yes, that’s a word) all around us if you know where to look.  And I began to look very closely.

Beauty is a Teacher

I learned that you can stand on a beach and be so full of despair that your body is sick with it.  That if you can’t even stand under the weight of your burden and you sink to your knees, thousands of remnants of lives once lived can reflect light up to you in hues that give you hope.  Hope that your life, too, can somehow rise as beauty even from a dead place.

I saw through my lens that though seasons come and go every year, sometimes there are moments so breathtaking, when the steadfast and the transient tuck in together in the most glorious shades of light and dark, you can feel like you are frozen in a magical moment in time.  And in that moment, all is well, and you are swallowed in beauty.

I learned that there is always life blooming somewhere.  And always life dying somewhere.  And that even the lonely, dying life can be lit from within as a reminder that there is a time for everything.

The world through my camera showed me that I’m not the only one traveling through this life, waiting.  That sometimes a careless notion left behind can still connect what soars above and stands below even if the way is not clear yet.

And so, if you have hope or need to see the world differently, or have fallen to your knees in despair, let’s be friends~