Living in depth and beauty

Because I am now reading Carl Honore's book In Praise of Slowness my mind is still on the subject of how deeply (or not) we live each moment. Early in his book he speaks about a cartoon he once saw. Two little girls are standing at the school bus stop, each clutching a personal planner.One says to the other, 'Okay, I'll move ballet back an hour, reschedule gymnastics, and cancel piano...you shift your violin lesson to Thursday and skip soccer practice ... that gives us from 3:15 to 3:45 on Wednesday the 16th to play'.

Does that sound too far fetched? Maybe it isn't anymore. Maybe even many of our children have their lives so highly planned that there is no time to just be - to just be children, to just discover and explore with imagination and freedom. And does it have to be that we adults live in the same pressured lifestyle? It is costly in many ways to change, but at least maybe it is worth starting in small ways, with little moments of time and see how much better we feel.

Which train of thought leads me to what seems to me at least, our increasingly odd sense of beauty. Just look at the billboards around town advertising all the beautiful products that are ours for the having (with help from our credit card and bank manager). Even people who are thought to be the beautiful people - the celebrities I was talking about before, might be thought to have a certain physical beauty but is there depth of beauty there? Goodness. Kindness. Compassion. Maybe there is but on the surface at least it seems often that what we are asked to consider beautiful is yes, the surface. 

Here are some people and things and situations that seem beautiful to me:

This flower just is. That is all it can be. And it gives infinite pleasure

This is Mary Jo - 92 years old. Isn't her face wonderful?

Just a small family watching a parade. But the mother's care is beautiful.

Some of my friends at l"Arche in Vancouver. Every single one is beauty in depth it seems to me.

I imagine in your life there is a great deal of beauty - it is surely worth cherishing and I would think we will see so much more if we live each moment as these authors I have mentioned the last few times, propose we do.