Being struck by the simplest beauty
When I go out walking around Hataitai and Mount Victoria, I’m quite often struck by the beauty of the smallest and seemingly most insignificant things. Sunlight on a leaf. Sunlight on the rust-iron pine needles. The deep grooves and scales of thick bark on a pine tree. I don’t know why we are struck by such small displays of beauty. I feel like I could look at whatever it is forever, like I’ve somehow transcended this world and I only need this leaf to feel happy ever again (of course until my brain sweeps in to tell me I need something else!).
What is this feeling? I suppose it’s awe or wonder or one of those lovely and connecting-to-something-bigger emotions. I like that we don’t know and don’t really need to know why we feel these things – not everything has to be worked out and reasoned and therefore prove something. It is enough that it just is, and I think this is what they mean when they talk about gratitude and how it can transform a life. I keep thinking about the part of Mary Oliver’s poem Sometimes:
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
I’m not convinced we always need to tell about it. Maybe it’s enough to just do the first two. But as I say that, I think that Mary Oliver knew that the world will be changed through this simple process of receiving and offering. I take in beauty, and I tell you so that you may take in that beauty and tell someone else. In this way, goodness and joy and love is shared.
So here’s me, telling you.
Jagged rocks at Breaker Bay dusted with lichen and surrounded by salty mist
A perfectly imperfect camellia flower, blooming mid-winter in Wellington
Surfers lap up the last waves of the day at Lyall Bay
The shadow of one kawakawa leaf onto another
A beautiful grove of kidney ferns glowing in the forest