a real simple message

I know many people want to dive into a blog post full of revelatory angst about [insert most recent angst topic: US politics; aging; desperation for self-care; cops killing black people; … the list is endless these days]. I don’t write about those modern day angst-filled topics and there is a very good reason why.

Sure, I have opinions about a lot of things. Some of those opinions are as strong as the bridge you drive over every day. And I do bring up some topics that I’m quite passionate about from time to time. But here’s the thing. First, this blog has always had the tagline, “observing an ordinary life in a beautiful world” and that’s what I focus on. Heck, I even have a full searchable category titled, “A Little Beauty Every Day.” Second, I honestly live a pretty content life for the most part. Oh sure, I can get riled over injustices and stupidity, but I have never been a person to focus on those things or allow them to become a major stressor in my life. I do what I can to change things and those that I can’t change, I leave them be. I certainly don’t need to be adding to all the noise.

I love the message in a recent blog post by Kerry Clare in which she writes, “To live my life with integrity, according to my principles, gently, and honourably. My intention not to to beat anyone over the head with a placard, metaphorically or otherwise, not to try to convert everyone around me to my way of being and my way of thinking, because I don’t want to live in a world where everybody thinks the same—how uninteresting is that?—”

In that same blog post, Kerry quoted from a newsletter by Katherine May in which May writes / implores:

If nothing else, keep making the world beautiful. Keep singing and dancing, drawing and planting gardens. This is no insignificant thing in the face of a movement that wants to make everything plain and ugly, cruel and sour. There is radicalism in refusing to judge. There is radicalism in listening. There is radicalism in saying, gently, ‘That’s not how I see it.’

Katherine May

And what Katherine May so eloquently suggests, that is how I {mostly} walk through this world. That’s me embracing the beauty and offering it up in the face of all the world’s angst and complications.

So this blog that I started and continue over twenty years later with the exact same tag line (as on day one) focuses on an ordinary life observing and embracing beauty. Beauty that is visual and beauty that is in our souls.

It’s a simple message.