Beauty 365 … Stories of Love and Life for Everyday

It struck me yesterday while driving my daughter to the local train station.

Platforms and bus shelters were packed with commuters intently hunched over devices; fingers and thumbs tapping and swiping madly, or in other cases, ear phones in, eyes closed, zoning out to music or gripping podcasts.

Despite being packed closely, like sardines in a tin, it was the complete absence of communication between the commuters, a complete lack of recognition of neighbour, that struck me most.

We seem to have adopted this new posture of late. This looking down…backs rounded, necks bent, eyes lowered.

We look down a lot, don’t we?

At screens, our phones, the roads, the dirt on the floor…our own belly buttons!?

I wonder what we might see if we looked up more often?

If you live in marvellous Melbourne like me, and are up bright and early, you may be lucky enough to see a cluster of vividly coloured hot air balloons wafting majestically across the crisp, blue, morning sky, like I did as I returned home from the trip to the station. We may see flowers, trees, the sky….even each other!

My favourite place to sky-gaze is by the sea, at Ventnor, Phillip Island. There, I can take in the hugeness of the skyscape, in all its unbroken beauty. I can see from which direction the weather comes. I notice clouds gathering on the horizon, or rain approaching from across the sea. And we have had many family gatherings at the lookout point; sitting together watching the incredible sky, painted with indescribable colours and cloud formations, as the sun slowly sinks.

The sky…its the world’s biggest art canvas isn’t it? Its never the same…always changing. From the varying shades of blue, grey, white and black, to the vivid oranges, yellows, pinks and reds of the sunrises and sunsets, and the night skies with their diamond stars and the ever changing moon.

In my In Search of Beauty presentations, I challenge audiences to make a commitment to looking up at the sky for one minute each day. (Could sparing a minute be so very difficult?)

Apart from lifting our chins and straightening out our posture, looking up at the sky somehow takes us beyond our own little world. It awakens in us a desire for something greater. We are renewed by its magnificence and majesty.

Well, what are you waiting for?

Go out to your bit of the sky right now! Look up, and be transformed!