It’s a Beautiful Day

Today (I am writing this from afar) the temperature is about 60 degrees (I do heat in Fahrenheit and cold in Celsius… it’s an immigrant thing). The skies are overcast, the air gentle. It could be warmer, it could be sunnier. I don’t care. It’s a beautiful day.

Imagine that every day when you awoke you saw the beauty of the day. Snow falling gently or blowing in great swaths across the sky. Rain pattering or pounding on your windows. Sunshine glowing around you or beating down relentlessly. It’s all beautiful it’s just a matter of perspective. (I’ll give you that driving in blowing snow is challenging, but if you take away the dread you’re feeling and really look, I promise, it’s a beautiful day.)

Each morning we are gifted with so much beauty: dew glistening on warm green leaves, frost sparkling in the sunshine. Last winter when I was out on a very cold morning taking Tabitha for a walk, I remember looking at the road in front of me and seeing all the diamonds glistening back. It was gorgeous. I was lucky to have seen it and appreciated it, instead of rushing to get the damn dog back inside where it was warm.

One of the biggest gifts I’ve been given is the time to wonder at the beauty around me. Whether I’m walking Tabi, sitting in my backyard, or visiting with friends, I take the time to stop and smell the air. I take in huge lungsful of the stuff and smile. It isn’t always apple blossoms where I live; sometimes they’re spreading the fields with manure, and it’s a little stinky. But it is still beautiful.

Lights reflected on a rainy city street are beautiful. Mist rolling across the roads or fields is beautiful. Oh, I get crotchety sometimes: damn and blast it’s cold and wet. But that grouchy doesn’t bring me any joy. So then I look for something lovely to focus on, something delightful to fill my eyes, so I can smile and say, “What a beautiful day.”

We sing songs about beautiful days because we consider them to be magical. We write stories and make movies about beautiful days. But can YOU make a beautiful day? Can you?

I think photographers may have more beautiful days because they have trained their eyes to seek out the magic. Maybe visual artists, too, since they’re so attuned to texture and colour. They also look at things slowly. And maybe that’s the key: to look slowly and observe deeply so you can relish what you’re seeing. They are patient. They seek out the beauty.

Remember the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day off? If you haven’t seen it you should. It’s a classic. Watch for the moment when Ferris says, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and take a look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Children know this intuitively. They can watch the ants for hours. They take huge delight in the flutter of a butterfly’s wings. They see the rain puddles as things to be joyfully jumped in. They love to try and catch snowflakes on the tips of their tongues. I remember watching my children watch the world, delighting in what they helped me to see.

Maybe if we all looked more slowly, we could all find he beauty in the day, and that would make the day more beautiful all day long.