“The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes.  If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it.  Your life will be impoverished.  But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.”

– Frank Lloyd Wright*

Life is beautiful.  Waking in the morning is a precious thing; and maybe the beauty of life becomes more apparent to us as we acknowledge that our days are limited.  When we were children, and each new thing that entered our world commanded our attention for the first time, the color of a flower or the scent of Spring or the soft touch of the breeze thrilled and excited us.  A chance to take off our shoes and dance in the warm summer rain was a joyful experience; and we reveled in the newness and surprises that filled our lives.  Then we became adults; and our focus changed.  The balance between experiencing life and consuming what it had to offer shifted.  No longer did we take the time to gather dandelions by the fistful.  Instead, we phoned in our beauty and had it delivered by FTD.  We were making our own way through life and valued the fruits of our own labors.  ”Beautiful” now became a new car or the latest gadget, and consuming took so much of our time that the beauty of our world only peeked through now and then.

As I have passed the predictable halfway point of my own life, I find that the cars and the goods and the possessions come and go.  What remains in my memory and has once again become the focus of my attention is the beauty that is not man-made.  I have watched my own children’s eyes sparkle with the discovery of the beauty that life has to offer.  Now I watch them as they watch their own babies reach with joy to pick their first dandelion.  Now, as I sort through all the years of memories  – all the dozens and hundreds of dandelions that have called out, “pick me”  – I see them again as I saw them the very first time, their beauty unfiltered by all the things that seemed so important.  I find myself uncluttering my environment and making room for the beauty that lasts.

Take some time each day to savor the beautiful things that you encounter.  Build your life around them rather than only stuffing them into the cracks and crevices between the things that do not last. Build your life within them so that your eyes can see clearly all the beauty that surrounds you.   Beauty never dies, but it can be ignored.  Give yourself the gift of truly seeing all that brings beauty to your life.  Let it call to life the beauty that rests within you and longs to leave its mark on the world.

*Innovative architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, managed to make the beauty of nature the centerpiece of his own masterpiece at Fallingwater in Western Pennsylvania.