“Life is beautiful”…. Yea right! You got $1million in trust fund bequeath you, a nice country house and fast car to make you say that. Well, I am not about that, I’d wish I had those niceties but not in grasp. There is more to life than what flashes the eye or looks appealing to sight. Money does not buy happiness but can create what you fancy.

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Recently I have noticed that what forms my reality is not what happens around me but what happens in me. Every day as I grapple with daily pecks of life’s challenges and survival, there are damning issues of life and my very tissues respond in complex altitudes. I bother sometimes, “why do I have to react that way”, “it wasn’t that bad after all”, “if only I had tried a little patience or tenderness”. These feelings buffet me and drains me of daily dose of joy.

The darkness that paves through my mind are not worthy of mention but I survived by pretending like everyone I know. My office janitor asked me one more time on a sullen Monday “how are you sir”, I hurriedly churn out my auto-responder “I am fine” but he noticed the look on my face was an act. Everybody going through some or something going through us. We are at either end of the equation, of which no one can solve.

Then I woke up, wide awake to what I have discovered, which is “the essence of beauty”. I configured my senses that I can form my reality, “my family is beautiful”, “my 1998 sedan is beautiful”, “my squashed project apartment is beautiful”, “my ever challenging career is beautiful”, “everything is beautiful”, “and my city is beautiful”. Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder and in the mind of the thoughtful.

The essence of beauty is to seek it, see it, feel it and transcend it. You will never love anything that you couldn’t see or trace the beauty it carries. You can continue moaning, “my life sucks”, “my job is stressful”, “my family is falling apart”, “my car is broken”, “my account is red”, “my relationship is dead”. For a minute can you decide to close your eyes to those events and gravitate towards the residue of beauty within your reach? Do not shut your mind to the possibility of a silver lining in the rot while believing and working towards a positive change.

The essence of beauty is to seek it, see it, feel it and transcend it. What do you see? obscurity or opportunity, failure or lesson, rot or work, weakness or strength, death or life, fear or faith, test or testimony, stumbling block or stepping stone, rejection or redirection, difficulty or taking responsibility…. What do you seek?  If you can’t seek beauty, you will not see true beauty, if only you desire to seek and never get to see it, you won’t be able to know how it feels. As GIGO, you may only transcend what you really felt. Beauty is only full and complete when it transcends. When you seek beauty in everything, every people and every situation, you can’t be stressed, depressed or digress; every day you feel more blessed and your mind rested.