Beauty is all around us, if only we chose to look up every once in awhile

A beautiful sunset reminds us that there is beauty in every situation. And if you can’t see it now, it will show itself eventually. We just must be patient in the seeking.

We have certainly experienced a wide swing from one end to the other on our weather spectrum. From dry and dusty to creeks and rivers flowing over their banks.

I don’t know why this question came up in my mind whether it was from reading or a conversation but it has stayed with me — “How do we perceive beauty?” I personally think we were given specific senses to experience the things that surround us, people, sounds, sights, places, thoughts. The night I watched the night sky light up with pockets of lighting it was like giant firecrackers popping. I knew the last thing we needed was another bad storm but I was also fascinated with the beauty of the sky.

When our world gets turned upside down, don’t we try and look for something good in the situation? It is hard to do when there is nothing but doom and gloom coming out of TVs, radios and cell phones. Sometimes it is better to lay all the tech stuff down for a while and go for a walk. It works well for me.

Anything that will help us retrieve our footing and feel grounded again is welcome. Some people ask me how I look at a bad, sad or unpleasant situation and somehow find something I think I was supposed to learn from it. I guess the answer is, I have to work at it

During one of the hot and dry stretches we were having I was working in my dried-out burnt-up yard trying to pull weeds. They would just break off, leaving the roots to push up more weeds in the future. As I pulled and tugged on the weeds I looked across the yard and saw a robin pulling as hard as she could on an earthworm trying to pull it out of the dry ground. She was persistent in her work, and when she finally popped the worm loose, she just stood there trying to gather enough strength to fly. She didn’t have to go far because her nest was in a nearby Maple tree. She fed her hungry babies then flew out again in search of more food.

I laughed at myself for fretting about weeds in my garden and just decided to walk around and enjoy the yard. In the distance I saw a beautiful sunset reflecting every color you can imagine. I thought to myself, “How do you perceive beauty?” and the answer to me was to look around and appreciate what we have. Looking at that sunset made me smile and I was glad that I had looked up. The very next day the rains came and everything was refreshed.

Linda Poland is Jonesborough’s Resident Storyteller