Tag: perception

Waiting For The Beautiful To Become Beautiful

Waiting For The Beautiful To Become Beautiful

“They’re gonna be so beautiful when they bloom!”

This was overheard at a local nature preserve known, in part, for their large daffodil field, home to thousands of bulbs getting ready to share their gift. Visiting the field has become an annual tradition for a great many.

You could feel the anticipation in their voices as the daffodils were just days away from fully blooming and offering their vibrant color to the world. A few thoughts came to me in that moment:

Weren’t the daffodils already beautiful? Right now? As they already are? Like, at what point does something – or someone – become beautiful?

Ours is a results-oriented culture with a track record of celebrating successful outcomes. We usually don’t get too excited about the process. What we accept as beauty is greatly influenced by expectations and contingencies and once those conditions are satisfied we then feel free to affix the “beautiful” label. The daffodils, so close to fully blooming, apparently had not met their conditions for being beautiful just yet.

From a human standpoint, can we only see others and ourselves as beautiful when they/we are done growing? Can we find beauty in our incompleteness, in our unfolding, just as much as we do when we have finally blossomed and become?

For many we don’t allow our unfinished self to be beautiful. We “rationalize” that the process can’t be beautiful, only the result. As if beautiful is some sort of destination. But as humans we are never done blossoming, never done growing, are we? Because as humans, our unlimited potential for growth and expansion in an equally unlimited and expansive universe will never allow us to ever be complete, or done, or fully expressed. If we are waiting for the finality of our expansion before we can acknowledge our own beauty we will be waiting an entire lifetime before we do so.

And that would be such a shame.

Because beautiful is something we already are.

Exactly where we are, right now.

In our infinite incompleteness.

In our never-ending unfolding.

It’s a great day to be you!

A New Found Appreciation for Trees

You can learn a lot from a tree.

As children, we excitedly spoke of what we’d like to be when we grew up.  Doctors, firefighters, baseball players, teachers.  I don’t recall anyone ever saying that they’d like to be a tree.

I can honestly state that I never wanted to become a tree.  Even today I have no desire to radically transform myself into trunk and branch.  Even if I did want to, I’m not quite sure how I would even go about it.  Trees have many great characteristics that we’d all love to possess.  They are tall, strong, self reliant, patient, and can weather the extreme changes of seasons.  The thing that inspires me about trees, though, is their attitude.

Continue reading “A New Found Appreciation for Trees” →

It’s a Great Day To Be You!

It’s all about you.

And why shouldn’t it be?

You’re a collection of unique gifts and characteristics. You are the only you there will ever be! The world needs you to be who you really are. The you that becomes the gifts and characteristics that make up your true self. 

Sometimes, though, we forget about our own greatness. We start listening to the voices of doubt and negativity that surround us. Our world view, once of abundance, hope, and opportunity, becomes jaded, abundance replaced with scarcity, improbability replacing possibility. Nothing has changed, except the way that we look at the world and at ourselves. 

PERCEPTION The difference between living half empty and Living Half Full is only a perception. Your perception. But you get to choose the way you look at the world and the way you choose to look at yourself. The sole purpose of this site is to challenge you to return to your own greatness, and then to challenge you to offer your greatness to the world.

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The world needs you to be great. 

It’s already in you.

Are you ready?

It’s a great day to be you!

Peter