beauty

Feeling Good Tip of the Day ~ Finding the Beautiful

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“Every day for a week, photograph something you find subtly beautiful: patterns in your sheets when you get up, your dog’s eyelashes, your child’s hands while they draw. At the end of the week, take a few minutes to look at them together.” Source

 

NOTE: The writer of the above advice offers the reader a challenge. The challenge isn’t so much about taking photos, the challenge lies in finding something beautiful, something that touches the heart. To find something beautiful that touches the heart requires us to slow down, empty our minds and let our hearts discover it for us.

Poem of the Day ~ Portrait

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Portrait

George Lenard Allen

Her eyes?   Dark pools of deepest shade,
    Like sylvan lakes that lie
In some sequestered forest glade
    Beneath a starry sky.

Her cheeks?   The ripened chestnut’s hue,—
    Rich autumn’s sun-kissed brown!
Caressed by sunbeams dancing through
    Red leaves that flutter down.

Her form?   A slender pine that sways
    Before the murmuring breeze
In summer, when the south wind plays
    Soft music through the trees.

Herself?   A laughing, joyous sprite
    Who smiles from dawn till dark,
As lovely as a summer night
    And carefree as a lark.

Source

Feeling Good Tip of the Day ~ Experience Awe and Feel Better

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Slow Down and Experience the Awe Around You

The psychologist Dacher Keltner in his recent book shows the beneficial effects of awe on our physical, mental, and emotional well-being. The research reveals that experiencing awe can reduce stress, quiet our inner critic, and inspire us to act more altruistically toward the people around us. The experience of awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that exceeds our current understanding of the world. It is the feeling of being overwhelmed by something larger than the self. For example, watching stars in the night sky reminds us of the universe beyond our experience. The experience is indescribable and beyond words. Awe comes in many forms, such as great music, visual design, and people’s courage, kindness, or strength in overcoming adversity. Our experiences of awe are accompanied by tears, chills, and goosebumps.

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Poem of the Day ~ somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

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somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

e. e. cummings

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

Source

Today’s Poem ~ She Walks in Beauty

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She Walks in Beauty 

George Gordon Byron

I.

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

II.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

III.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

 

Source

Think About It ~ Beauty Surround Us

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Source

Our days are better when we discover something beautiful to see. If we’re too busy, we’ll miss it. Slow down, perhaps to the speed limit, and enjoy all the beauty surrounding you.

Think About It ~ Nature’s Beauty Surrounds Us

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Nature’s beauty surrounds us. All it takes is an open heart to see it.

Take a moment to catch a glimpse of the wonder and beauty surrounding you.

Today’s Poem ~ I Am One

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I Am One

Basho

I am one
Who eats his breakfast,
Gazing at the morning-glories.

Source

A Better Life ~ What Are You Going to Do?

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“Tell me, what is it you plan to do /  with your one wild and precious life?(Mary Oliver)” – Life is a gift. We didn’t ask for it. We received it. Each moment we have is a gift and a precious treasure. When we receive a precious gift, what do we do with it? I imagine the gift is cared for with deep love. It is kept in a protected place where others can see it. Are we not more valuable than any precious material gift we might receive? Why not treat this gift of life we have with deep reverence, gratitude, love, and use it to produce something beautiful.

Today’s Poem ~ Beauty

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Beauty
Edward Thomas
WHAT does it mean? Tired, angry, and ill at ease,
No man, woman, or child alive could please
Me now. And yet I almost dare to laugh
Because I sit and frame an epitaph–
“Here lies all that no one loved of him
And that loved no one.” Then in a trice that whim
Has wearied. But, though I am like a river
At fall of evening when it seems that never
Has the sun lighted it or warmed it, while
Cross breezes cut the surface to a file,
This heart, some fraction of me, happily
Floats through a window even now to a tree
Down in the misting, dim-lit, quiet vale;
Not like a pewit that returns to wail
For something it has lost, but like a dove
That slants unanswering to its home and love.
There I find my rest, and through the dusk air
Flies what yet lives in me. Beauty is there

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