Beauty is there, in every moment.
When our lives are busy, we miss the moment. That is a loss in our lives, that we do not see the beauty, the iridescent beauty in each moment.
When I sit in the morning, cup of coffee – a little bit of milk, thank you – in hand, if I am awake and aware, I see the beauty of the day as it arrives, moment by moment, moment by precious moment. I gaze, I don’t stare, but I gaze with a soft gaze at the tree and the sky beyond, just outside my front window.
There, there – I catch for a moment a certain shade of light, the light of that day, that moment, that morning, that season.
Ahhh… as I gazed a few mornings ago, a rainbow drifted across the sky, the air filled with some drops of moisture that day. The rainbow gleamed. I stepped out onto the porch to see it arc across the sky, end to end, that ephemeral, transient beauty. From one moment to the next, it dissolved into nothing. Now, it is only a memory, a memory of a deep and rich and passing moment.
Moments are attached to feelings, feelings, that great gift and burden, of being human. In the moment, in the feeling, there is the hint – always the hint – that this is passing, that this is brief, that this, like everything else, will die. This moment will be gone. This moment of beauty, of the fulness of life, of great feeling, will be gone… is gone.
One day, I sat at my wooden desk. On one corner of the desk I have framed a greeting card, an imaginary, art nouveau woman with a flowing robe and flowing red hair. She is surrounded by architectural design rather than an ordinary room or place. The image is a myriad of colors, representative of that time and place, that form of art. But that is not what the image brought to mind. As I sat that day, I was touched, to my core, with the beauty of that image, that imaginary image of a life, of a moment, filled with color, beauty.
And then, I was sad, or filled with longing, or fear, or loss. I was filled with deep feeling, a sort of melancholy. One day – today? tomorrow? the next? when? – I would not be able to know such beauty in this particular form, in my being, in my body, in this place, in these surroundings. This moment of beauty, of absolute beauty, was passing, and as I reflected, had already passed.
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These mornings, I watch the passing of the moments as the days break. I watch, also, the passing of seasons, of time as each day becomes longer than the last. There is something so human, so sentient, in each moment. In all the days and years that have passed, how often have I rushed from one important meeting, event, gathering, to the next – and been completely unaware, at the same time, of the beauty of this particular moment, this light, this being-ness, this breath, this sound, this color?
If the gift of being human is to be cast into these bodies, these feeling bodies, then the gift is to receive the pain, the absolute pain and power and beauty of each moment. When we miss it, it is gone – forever. Forever gone, and missed, completely eradicated from existence without one knowing, one awareness, one breath caught, one feeling, one deep emotion.
Like you, I have missed so many of these moments of my life. They are all around us, I am sure, ready to be seen, not grasped, but simply experienced, known, loved, accepted. Words fail me. Experience passes. Life continues – with all its importance, its business, its agenda.
Gaze. Gaze at the world around you, your world. See. See what is. Now. Live it, now.
