Beauty

I am in love with beauty. I seek beauty. I want to surround myself with beautiful things. I cannot long speak of beauty without speaking of love, and I cannot speak of love without speaking of joy.

When I was young I decided I wanted to dedicate my life to teaching people to love each other. I wanted to help create a more loving world. I also was becoming a photographer wanting to capture images of beautiful things. I later realized that it was not my job to teach people how to love but for me to simply share my love with the world. One way I could do this was by sharing beauty with the world.

For me Love and Joy and Beauty are inseparable. It was a powerful revelation for me that love and joy are the same thing. In other words, to love someone or something is to feel joy when your attention is on them or it. When I say I love oak trees it means they stir joy inside me. What about people? To be truly loving someone you must be in a state of joy. You cannot love someone and be angry or afraid or jealous at the same time. Those negative emotions and love are not compatible. Love always feels good. Anything that feels bad is not love. Our capacity to love is directly linked to our ability to feel joy. Want to love others? Get happy. To love and feel joy is our true nature. It is all a matter of reconnecting with who we really are.

One way I connect with my true self is by experiencing beauty. This can be the beauty of nature or that which is human-made. I love creating beautiful things. It is life-giving for me. When I make something beautiful and sending out into the world it is carrying with it the joy/love that I felt upon creating it. It is my hope that you will feel that. It is my gift to you.

One of the great things about having an iPhone for me is that I have a camera in my pocket all the time. This allows me to take spontaneous pictures of things that I think are beautiful. The picture below is a shot of the ceiling above our Christmas tree from a year ago. I just love accidental beauty like this.