Beauty Abounds

Our brain searches for things that are pleasing to the eye, things that are symmetrical, harmonious, and youthful. Once these attributes are found we often define them by using the word "beauty." We recognize beauty most often as a human characteristic and tend to leave all other discovered forms of beauty to artists, poets, and photographers. Most will go about their daily lives not attending to other forms of beauty, beauty that abounds in every place and everything around. Perhaps happiness could be easier to attain if we did stop to notice and appreciate these other forms of beauty that fill our lives every day.

At this time in early Spring there are but two lonely hyacinth bursting through the ground near the front porch. They return each year, sometimes even pushing themselves through the remaining snow and ice. They grow rapidly and lead the way for all others that follow. They brighten the ground with color and life when most others still wait in dormancy. Their lives are short-lived, but during the time that they are with us, they burst with delicate fragrant petals unlike any other and continue to delight me year after year, if only for a fleeting moment in time.

Your assignment is to go out into the world and find a little beauty. Describe that beauty with as many words as you feel necessary. You may find beauty in places you hadn't imagined, in the face of a toothless child singing to himself, in a single dead leaf still dangling on the branch of a tree, or in the lined face of an elderly man holding the door for someone.