Appreciate Away

It's Thursday and maybe you are counting the minutes until Friday while enduring the mundane.  It's January and maybe the excitement of the holidays has left and taken your joy with it.  It's winter and maybe your family is sick, which seems to be the case with a LOT of people right now.  It's 2011 and maybe you are stuck in the middle of controversy or drama that makes you want to crawl into a hole and stay there.  There are many things that way on us every day.  And they make us bitter, resentful and flat out negative about everything, whether it/they deserve it or not.  It is natural to find ourselves here, but unhealthy to live there.

All of these things can be distractions for us, blocking out all of the really beautiful and noteworthy things existing around us.  Last night Randy shared with me the guitarist Jeff Beck.  Oh, and by the way, Randy is an information and library junkie, constantly looking for new and different things, in case you hadn't noticed. :) Anyway, as I'm changing Jude's diaper last night, from the other room Randy is saying "Listen to this!" and proceeds to discuss whether or not Jeff Beck is playing with a slide.  Honestly, I was only half listening.  His rendition of "Over the Rainbow" was beautiful, sure.  But it was already late and I had to feed Jude again before we could go to bed.  I told him to save the cd on our computer and I could listen to it more later.  I was in no way appreciating it.  Too busy with other things.

This morning I took some time to listen to it more.  I've already listened to most of the album 4 or 5 times.  This guy provides an emotional experience with just an electric guitar (and back up of course, but hey)!  Sit for a moment longer and listen to it.  It's beautiful, don't you think?



How much beauty and notable things are in your life that you skim right over?  What unique lessons are you going to learn from the negative experience you're going through right now?  Basically, how much of your life are you missing because you're hung up on unhappy things?  There is beauty and joy in the most  unlikely of places and every day we choose to appreciate it or not! And if you would allow me to prove the point further, watch this video (that you may have seen before).  It makes me cry every time I see it!  Have a wonderful Thursday!