The Good, The Bad, and The Beautiful!

In all our experiences we have the choice of how we think about them. We can look for the good. We can look for the bad. And we can look for the beautiful. The old Clint Eastwood movie, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, expressed another viewpoint. I prefer thinking about the beautiful rather than the ugly. The old saying is “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and I view this as a choice. I can choose to find beauty or ugliness. I choose beauty. I can also choose to be good or bad but I cannot choose whether good things or bad things will happen. I had no choice as to whether the Corona virus would come to America. But I do have a choice regarding how I will respond to this bad situation. I can be a force for good and beauty and I can reject bad behavior and ugliness.

So, what is so beautiful? What do I see in my world that I view as beautiful? There’s so much beauty out there, it’s hard to identify it all. My family is beautiful. My community is beautiful. Today, as I write this, it is chilly and rainy but as I look out my window I see a beautiful lake and trees with beautiful young leaves just bursting with new life and fresh green energy! I hear birds singing and the rain playing a soft rhythm on my deck and I’m lifted by the beauty of this morning. Just 3 days ago, I was in Sarasota, Florida with the sun shining and a sky so blue it was as if an artist has brushed the heavens with the most magnificent blue paint; beauty for all to enjoy. And 2 days ago, on our drive from Florida back to Michigan, the mountains of Tennessee; all I can say is gorgeous.

Beauty is all around us. It is for us to see. If we rush through life without seeing it, that’s our own mistake. We can fill our lives with busyness or we can fill our lives with beauty. The choice is ours and only we can make the choice. By finding the beauty, we do not eliminate the ugly and the bad, but we do shift our focus and where our focus lies, there is our direction. Our direction determines our destination. My desire is for my destination to be a beautiful place, a peaceful place, a place of goodness and love. The only way for me to get there is to keep my eyes on that target. Some will say they cannot do that. The needs of there world won’t let them. My question is why? Does getting things done keep us from seeing the beautiful and make us see only ugliness, badness, what’s wrong, and pain? I don’t think so! I think it’s a choice. We can choose goodness and beauty! So, why not do that!