Beauty

Tiny rain drops were clustered on the petals of a new iris in my garden this morning. The beauty of the living plant was unintentional and pure, like the rain water itself. Later in the day I stopped my car at an intersection to allow a pedestrian to cross. The pedestrian, a young man in his twenties, was indeed beautiful. His beauty, however, was so different in my eyes from the beauty of the iris. His eyes held a cruelty. His walk was aggressive. He was very conscious of my eyes on him. I then went to my supermarket on my way home. One of the baggers, a plump and cheerful young man with a severe learning disability, was seated at a long table by the door. "Buy a raffle ticket for the Jimmy Fund. Win five hundred dollars. Everyone's a winner." The Jimmy Fund benefits research on pediatric illnesses. Here in my day was another kind of beauty. It was the unconscious beauty of a person who was being happily himself in the moment, despite considerable barriers to that happiness. It is that beauty to which I aspire in my practice.