We get so caught up in our daily lives; we miss all the
beauty around us.
One of my favorite stories goes like this…
A little boy and his dad walk out to the car and on the way
the little boy sees an old, dirty, yogurt carton. He stops to start playing with
it. The father who is in a hurry, pulls on his sons arm saying “Come on, come
on, we have to go, we are going to be late!” the son gives his Dad and sad look
as if he just lost his favorite toy. The boy and father get in the car and the
Dad says to his son, “Son I don’t want you playing with trash okay?” The boy
responses with “Dad, I wasn’t playing with trash, there was a caterpillar in
there.” The dad says “Really, how did you see it in there?” The boy replies
“There is always something beautiful everywhere you look, you just have to
look.” The father smiles and rubs his son’s head and sighs.
My schedule at camp is go go go. We don’t have much time to
stop and look around at the beauty around us. I live on the beach and I surf
during the sunset 4 days out of 7. I am lucky, but if I do not stop and look at
it from more than twenty seconds, it passes me and I don’t get to let it sink
in. This happens all the time. I surf with dolphins almost every other day,
again if I do not stop and look at how cool it is instead of worrying about the
next wave I want to catch, I would be a lot happier.
Life is about seeing the little things in life, which is
where you will find your happiness. Like the way the grass feels, the clouds
that are full and white, the child’s laughter, the color of the sand, the birds
in the sky that chase each other, the sound the fire makes when it crackles,
the feeling you get after arriving where you are meant to be after a long
journey, the ants that are carrying the heaviest little cracker. These are just
some of the things we tend to pass up.
The boy in the story stopped and noticed the beauty in the
trash. There is always beauty in a city, no matter how busy it is, it is there.
There is an overwhelming amount of beauty in the edge of the ocean, and I have
a chance to live there for 10 weeks. I made a group of 14-year-old girls go on
a jetty walk and after they all said that they liked it even though they
thought they wouldn’t. I made them stop and look, and that is okay, sometimes
we need to have people do that for us.
Go somewhere, get out and take in some fresh air. See the
beauty that is all around you, and stop worrying about all the negative and all
that you have to do.
Stop. Look. Breathe.
