This month, I’m traveling Europe for no reason other than to get lost, get found, and enjoy some encounters with people and places. To frame the experience more intently, I started asking questions that focused my attention in new ways. I started to research “beauty,” not in journal articles but as a lived experience.
I asked, what does it mean to put beauty at the center of experience? How does it change the way I see things? Suddenly, there was so much more to the chair I was sitting on. And the loud music that was once interfering with my writing process became a curious expression of the person who tuned the volume. And the pains I was having in my body became an extension of the phenomenon. Things changed beautifully, without trying to change a thing.
It’s easy to see beauty in St. Giovanni Church and the Coliseum in Rome, or the lake and castle in Bracciano. What about the beauty in so called ordinary things? By being with what is received through the senses, every detail in the environment illuminates as a reflection of our own nature, which is beautiful.