Beauty

I wanted to write something very profound about beauty. I imagined people saying, "I never thought of beauty that way before." However, it seems that what comes out is anything but beauty.

I have noticed that I haven't been appreciating beauty recently. Especially simple beauty. Instead, I have been looking far too much at ugly. Failures, disappointments, lies. Have you noticed how ugly ugly is? It only takes one ugly to ruin a beautiful day. The stranger making a rude gesture at me from the car next to me. My friend doesn't like what I spent the last two months writing. I overdrafted my bank account again. While some ugly is small and only annoying, other ugly cuts to the core of my being. The ugly I hate most is the ugly I find within. When it is the ugly in me hurting others.

Because ugly occupies my mind so much, I find myself wondering if ugly is more powerful than beauty. After all, how often does one glimpse of beauty make my day? It happens rarely. After a day full of ugly, beauty is a dawn after a long dark night. It gives birth to hope when ugly is all around.

So what is the difference? Why is it on some days one ugly spoils and others beauty restores? It comes down to what I have chosen to look at. On a day when I am being annoyed by a small ugly, I storm by the simple beauty along the path. Any of which would bring a shaft of sunlight through the dark gloom in my mind. Perhaps this is one reason the Creator made flowers beautiful. To give me a reason to stop looking at the ugly and look at the beauty.