Find beauty, wherever you are
Had a delightful conversation yesterday about creativity with a group of people at a local bookstore, where we gathered to discuss Austin Kleon's book Steal Like An Artist.
Some of the attendees were passing through the city, taking a break from work or their usual routine. There was much discussion about places and cities that inspire us, beautiful locations that energize us and spark our creativity.
While I appreciate the concept and have a few such places, it's easy to overlook the beauty of one's immediate surroundings. The familiar places. The streets we traverse on the way to appointments and errands.
Walking without a destination, but simply for the sake of walking, has a way of opening us up to the beauty that surrounds us at every moment. If we allow ourselves to be fully present (for me, that means no headphones or smartphone), we begin to see our surroundings not as a backdrop, but as vibrant, detailed places filled with color and vitality.
We start to find beauty in these places, a simple yet profound beauty: the way sunlight filters through the trees, how it illuminates the buildings and casts shadows, wild plants growing through cracks in the pavement, roots breaking through and dislodging bricks laid long ago, storefronts bursting with shapes and colors.
This is a beauty unlike that assigned to distant places and dream destinations. A quieter, more familiar kind of beauty. Its power lies not in its novelty, but in its familiarity. In discovering new details, new sources of delight.
It's becoming my favorite kind of beauty because it requires so little: only that we step outside, start walking, and open our senses.
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