It began just as I was walking out of my dorm to go to class. There’s a building next door that is in the process of being gutted and torn down. The windows are all gone and random chunks of metal, concrete, and other debris piled all over the fenced in construction area. A wrecking ball suspends from a thick cable attached to a giant crane. Somehow, the destruction strikes me as beautiful. In a few months time, a brand new building will stand in its place, but the pure, perfect new building cannot hold to the old building whose guts and inner soul are wretched from inside. Its heart is on the ground. Beauty.
Across from the building, there is a white stone bench, its blank backside facing the sidewalk. On Valentine’s Day, a beautiful four-line love poem filled the backside of the bench. Today, two maintenance workers sat in the bench, one leg crossed over the other and their arms folded behind their necks. A plastic tub of white paint and a paint roller in a small tin tray sat against one of the corners of the bench. The love poem was gone. But still, the scene was beautiful.
The entire day was like this. At every given moment, I found something beautiful in the situation. On a delivery, I held the door open for a man wheeling several boxes outside to his delivery truck. I didn’t get a tip from the lady I delivered to, but it was okay. I got a “tip” in another way—by making someone else’s day a little bit easier.
I also took a delivery to a woman who worked in a small counseling center out of a refurbished house. She was blind. She held a job, could operate a phone, read a credit card number (or at least have it memorized), sign her name, all without being able to see and visualize anything, and she looked pretty to top it off. She didn’t let a handicap hinder her from living life to the fullest. She inspired me. Sometimes, I try to find excuses as to why I can or couldn’t do something, but here is this woman who could so easily use the lack of sight to have life handed to her, but instead she challenges herself to overcome it. Beauty.
I drove with my windows down and pleasant music playing.
I slowed down so people could get over a lane our pull out of a parking spot.
I talked with a stranger on the way to class, I don’t even remember what about, but it began by my holding the door open for her.
Small flaws did not bother me—when a lady at a stop sign went ahead of me though I had the right of way, or when I could’ve sworn I’d made more tips than I went home with. My boss snapped at me for something, I winced, but was long forgotten by the time I was back in my car on my way to another delivery. All these little things, my little attempts to find something positive and beautiful in everything I encountered—all made my day, in itself, beautiful.
If I could choose my own heaven, the place and things my soul would do after departing my body, I would become a little fairy who puts dollar bills in people’s pockets or moves their keys to an obvious place where they can easily be found. Sort of like a fairy godmother, I suppose. I would make each day like today—full of beauty and creating happiness.
Days like these are the epitome of my soul’s existence. Today was the state of mind, the peaceful easy feeling, that I aim to achieve every day. For everyone I interacted with today, you are loved and you are beautiful :D
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