All The Pretty Flowers

I am the kind of person who chases butterflies, or boulder-hops across a river to take a picture of a flower (specifically the flower in this picture), or stops to let a squirrel cross the pathway ahead of me. I love nature’s beauty and soak in its energy. People are sometimes surprised that I take time to appreciate “the little things.” They say “Aww, that’s nice.”

I say it is more than nice, it is necessary to appreciate “the little things.” Your world consists of what you focus on. You choose what to include in your view and what to ignore – thus expanding or narrowing your world. If you focus only on those things right before your eyes; that project, that bill, that incident, that goal, you narrow your world, and the narrower your world the more easily it can topple and fall apart.

If however you look up and out, you see the beauty and life that surrounds you, you marvel at the pretty flower growing through the cracks in the concrete (they’re usually called weeds), you take pleasure in the warmth of the sunshine, or the clean coolness you feel passing under a tree, you expand your world. You allow all these mundane “little things” to renew you and keep things in context. After all, when the big things feel like they’re all going to hell in a hand basket, sometimes the little things are all we have that we can smile about. So even if that project deadline is fast approaching and that bill sits on the counter unpaid, it doesn’t stop that butterfly from being pretty. Life continues on in all its splendor, and so will you.

(Photo by Kelene Blake)