There are times when I doubt. I doubt myself, my path, and the choices I have made. I doubt that things will work out just the way I have convinced myself that they should be. I doubt that I am doing the right thing. So, I look down. Then suddenly something will enter my vision, and that something will be beautiful enough to make me look up.
Today I took a canoe trip down a clear, gorgeous spring fed river with my family. My husband, my father and my daughter took one canoe. My son, my mother and I took another. Since none of the three of us in my little boat had experience paddling a canoe, we smacked into a tree within about five minutes of take off. No big deal, but admittedly frustrating enough for the three of us to panic for a moment and then bicker about who had caused the crash.
I looked up and saw a family of turtles sunning themselves on a nearby log, and the happy little sight of them brought me back to seeing what was important. There I had been, worrying about something trivial, something of no consequence. Then there I was, seeing the beauty of nature and realizing the significance of family, of being together, of the way things are and are supposed to be.
Life takes us through amazing things. We approach something new with excitement and wonder, but also with trepidation and fear. Sometimes we crash. Sometimes the consequences of making a mistake are trivial, and sometimes they can be catastrophic. But I realize that if I had not made those choices, or if the good and bad things that have happened to me had not happened, I would not be exactly where I am right now. I would not have been here to see the beauty that made me look up again.
We can choose to keep looking down, or we can let ourselves look up and find the beauty. So look. Look around you. There is love around you that you have neglected to see. It is very possible that you have not paid enough attention to the good and beautiful things in your life as it is right now. Whatever magnificence you see when you look up would not be there if you had made another choice. So look up and see the exquisite life you have at this very moment.
The possibilities for noticing beauty are everywhere. Look for it. See it. Feel it. Breathe it in. And when you find it, you will see that we are where we are meant to be at this moment.
So look.
