“The pale stars were sliding into their places. The whispering of the leaves was almost hushed. All about them it was still and shadowy and sweet. It was that wonderful moment when, for lack of a visible horizon, the not yet darkened world seems infinitely greater—a moment when anything can happen, anything be believed in.” ― Olivia Howard Dunbar, The Shell of Sense
…sometimes the only thing that we need to change is our perspective…our focus…it will change our whole world…and more importantly…it will change our experience of that world…reality may stay the same…but the experience will be totally different…
The time difference between the two photographs was only a short span of time…and a slight turn to the left…from exactly the same point…
Yet…in those few minutes…the lit house directly in my line of sight…seemingly impeding our view…was “poof”…gone…and the evening seemed to be strewn with diamonds and shiny pieces of glass…shrouded in elegant black velvet filigree…
That is what gratitude does for me…it changes my perspective…what I focus on…reality doesn’t change…but my experience of the moment does…
There were days at the office when the girls and I were ready to scream…the boss was unhappy…customers were screaming and needing everything right now…at this particular moment…and all at the same time…our teammates were not being cooperative in helping to find solutions…in a nutshell…swirling dust devils of anger and frustration…
The only thing that gave us perspective was…to take a gratitude break…I would stop and ask, “OK, what are we grateful for?”…it would help to break the negative emotional downward spiral that we were on…the irritation..the exasperation that we felt building…
…working close to work…having a job…flexibility in leaving if we had an emergency…not grandiose ideas…but enough to change the momentum in a breathe or two…
It is the same here…living in this new environment…when the loneliness and frustrations arise…I soften up and breathe…sit in the moment and count my blessings…Mr. P first and foremost…my not dealing with the incredible stress and frustration of my old life…the beauty that I am surrounded with..all of the new experiences that I have the chance to encounter…the dreams and creative and artistic endeavors that I now have the opportunity to explore…
“There is a magnificent, beautiful, wonderful painting in front of you! It is intricate, detailed, a painstaking labor of devotion and love! The colors are like no other, they swim and leap, they trickle and embellish! And yet you choose to fixate your eyes on the small fly which has landed on it! Why do you do such a thing?”
― C. JoyBell C.
Photo by Drew Patrick Miller on Unsplash
Great post 🙂
💐thank you for taking the time to comment
It was just one of many beautiful evenings, those evenings were captured by the shutter of my eye and human memory to record the images on.
💝