everything is beautiful

When good things happen, you celebrate for a day. You cut cake. Blow out candles. Dance with friends. It’s fleeting.

When bad things happen, they last for weeks, months — hell, maybe they never end. You sob. You starve. You mourn. It’s all consuming. 

And suddenly, it becomes clear why it is so easy to recall the bad, the traumatizing, the terrible. 

Beautiful moments are here and gone, sand slipping through your fingers. 

Heavy moments are slow —  spreading and seeping. 

But what if that weren’t true? What if beauty was all around us — all of the time? 

What if we paid attention?

I started paying attention, and do you want to know what I saw?

I saw a man, walking so slowly, just to keep pace with his elderly mother, the cane shaking in her hand. 

A little boy handing a little girl — a stranger — candy at a parade, so she would feel included. 

A family — smiling and eager, holding their hand drawn signs, colorful and glittered — waiting for the single moment they can cheer on their daughter, sister, aunt, as she runs by. 

Our neighbor, hand delivering us her extra blueberries so they didn’t go to waste when she left town. 

So often, and so easily, we remember the bad, the evil. We have trained ourselves to search for it, to expect it, to prepare for it. 

But when you stop yourself, when you slow down and pay attention, you realize that most people are good and all things are beautiful. You just have to pay attention.