Did you look for it?  Today? Something Beautiful and True? It’s not easy some days, like today when I spent FOUR HOURS at the DMV! I sat among a hundred others, waiting for my number (163, I had time to memorize it) and it took me about an hour to realize that I wasn’t even looking for anything Beautiful and True!

I’d love to tell you a long whiney story about why it was four hours and this ridiculous thing and that frustrating thing and so on, but that would not be edifying. What I did realize is that some days make it harder, but at least I started looking for it – something Beautiful and True. Maybe that is why I saw Alysha, not that I wouldn’t have “seen” her otherwise, but maybe it is why I saw her differently.

Alysha was the woman who called my lucky number. She was strained but not beleaguered, though she had every right to be, as a poor soul working inside such an inefficient bureaucracy where one mistake can send you into a four hour abyss (wait, Pull up! Pull up!).  Alysha took a deep breath, looked me in the eyes, apologized and somehow managed to be kind. She got interrupted at least four times by others who needed her to answer questions, but she never expressed impatience or frustration. She demonstrated a deep reservoir of persistent kindness amidst stress. I decided that is as beautiful as it gets in the DMV.

No matter the circumstances of your day, if you form the daily habit of looking for the Beautiful and True, it will help. Give it a seven day test, and let me know if I’m wrong! Seven days where you intentionally notice something Beautiful and True in each day, it will foster gratitude, peace (at least for a moment) and you might even be tempted to point out that thing to someone else, because the Beautiful and True deserves to be shared – in fact, we delight in sharing it.

“I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.” – C.S. Lewis