Today's Quotation:

As I experience it, appreciation of beauty is access to the soul.  With beauty in our lives, we walk and carry ourselves more lightly and with a different look in our eyes.  To look into the eyes of someone beholding beauty is to look through the windows of the soul.  Anytime we catch a glimpse of soul, beauty is there; anytime we catch our breath and feel "How beautiful!," the soul is present.

Jean Shinoda Bolen

Today's Meditation:

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" expresses the thought that not everyone sees things in the same way.  What's beautiful to one person may be just pleasing to another, while what I see as very ugly, you may see as beautiful.  In a way, though, the statement gives us an excuse for not seeing beauty in places and things where it definitely is.

Sometimes the things that I first see as unattractive become the most beautiful as I learn more about them and see the many different facets they hold.  An ordinary tree becomes beautiful as we get closer to it and recognize its complexity and uniqueness, and as we keep in mind that the tree is producing oxygen that allows us to continue breathing, its beauty deepens.

When I read Jean's words, I can't help but think of how amazing it is to watch a young child who's seeing something marvelous for the very first time.  Children's eyes at times like those are uplifting and inspiring, for they remind us what it means to feel wonder and to be able to marvel at something beautiful.

If I don't see something or someone as beautiful, I often ask myself what it is in me that's keeping me from seeing the beauty.  What part of me is blocking my vision so that I can't see the most precious aspects of that thing or person?  If I can find an answer to that question, then seeing the beauty all around me becomes easier, and my soul becomes richer.

Questions to ponder:

1.  What things may keep us from seeing the beauty that's always around us?

2.  What's the value of beauty in your life?

3.  How can we share beauty with others, thus enriching their lives?

For further thought:

Beauty means this to one person, perhaps, and that to the other. And yet when any one of us has seen or heard or read that which to us is beautiful, we have known an emotion which is in every case the same in kind, if not in degree; an emotion precious and uplifting.

John Galsworthy

more thoughts and ideas on beauty

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