Enriched

Being impressed, surprised, delighted, grateful is a habit of thinking I practice every day.  I try to bring that perspective to all my experience.  Staying tuned in to now and noticing what I see with gratitude and kindness creates. All perspective creates.  It's just that being grateful and feeling loving kindness are so much more fun than being underwhelmed and feeling bored or bitter and resentful. Staying present to now, to all your senses, wide open - is my intention and choice. Cultivating that kind of attention does take effort and practice.  We all know people who only want the "unvarnished" truth and believe it can't be true if it is not unpleasant.  That viewpoint is a practice, a choice and a habit of thinking, too.  It is certainly no more or less true than other perspectives.  Seeing the colors and texture of the aged and unvarnished ceiling of this old, abandoned railroad car, enjoying the beauty of it's story just as it is right there, while also knowing it was once lovely in a different, more varnished way.  That's fun.  That is as true as viewing it as a sad testament to human frailty, a symbol of death and decay.  The lens we use is our choice and we get the consequent feeling from those judgements.  That railroad car doesn't care what you see.  It may seem foolish in the face of a world of suffering to be grateful and determined to see beauty in unlikely spots.  It can be called pretend, putting lipstick on a pig.  To me, it's what being human is all about.  Every thought and perspective and experience creates.  If adding a little color helps you see in a new way, bring on the lipstick.