Feeling the beauty and vitality of life sometimes has more to do with courage than anything else. Courage to open your arms, place a grin your face, and try your best to let go of all the reasons why you are not allowed to be happy or elated right now.
Have you ever fully embraced a moment of beauty that came your way?
It’s hard to fully experience any moment.
It takes a lot of courage to slow down enough even to appreciate the good times in life. The sun shining through your window; a soft pleasant breeze; a happy song that comes on the radio.
To appreciate these moments you need strength to go against the grain of your negative conditioning. You have to get through all the resistance that’s holding you back from allowing yourself to truly embrace that beauty.
At times you may tell yourself “you don’t deserve to take in this moment, you are in the middle of a work day, you have to be productive now.”
“You need to get somewhere, you need to get something done, keep moving.”
“What right do you have to fully enjoy this moment after messing up this and that?”
“You can’t allow yourself to truly bliss out on this moment because there is something else in your life that you are unhappy about that hasn’t been resolved yet.”
However, to live beautifully and richley, one needs the strength to move past these voices.
Perhaps, part of you is afraid of what would be available or required if you did drop these negative voices. How would you need to engage with life if you allowed yourself to be present and guilt free? What kind of courage would be needed to maintain that openness.
To slow down and appreciate the awesomeness of any moment requires a lot of things. Sometimes is requires deep healing so that one can work through the emotional baggage that is holding down their mind, body, and psyche.
However, other times it also requires courage.
Courage to hold onto the belief that you are beautiful, that the world is beautiful, and that wherever you are struggling with doesn’t affect your essential beauty or the worlds.
Courage to hang out with the moment long enough to tap into it and embrace its beauty.
A few months ago I was driving up to San Francisco from my home in Los Angeles. Midway, I pulled over to the side of the highway to shake out my legs and take a break from the long drive.
It was great to breathe in the air and get the circulation moving again in my body. I was safely on the shoulder of the road but I could still feel the force of the tractor trailers as they speed past me at highway speeds.
The evening was truly delightful. The air was so clean and fresh, the temperature was perfect, and there was a smell that somehow reminded me of great experiences that I had in the past.
However, after just a quick few minutes of shaking out my legs I thought “O.k. now you need to get back into your car and continue driving. You need to get to your destination as soon as possible.”
Truthfully, I was not in a rush or late, but it was somehow so deeply conditioned inside of me that I couldn’t just hang out on the side of the highway and enjoy the evening or the moment. Some part of me wanted to resist fully taking in that moment and just follow normal societal procedures and quickly get back into my car and continue driving.
Luckily, this time, I fought that impulse. Luckily, I had the courage to resist the pull of getting back into my car “just because” and got up on the roof my car, laid down, and looked up at the stars.
I managed to take a few breaths and enjoyed the relaxation that came along with them. I gulped in the air, I took in the beauty, I smiled at the sky.
These moments of hanging out on the side of the road are moments that are filled with life.
I was not just existing or letting time carry me along,
I was engaging life,
I was choosing,
I was experiencing beauty.
I’m happy I resisted the urge to get back into my car and that I had the courage to fully embrace that moment without thinking that I needed to run anywhere. I’m happy because that beauty and aliveness goes deep and nourishes deeply.
It’s hard to choose positivity over apathy.
It’s hard to grin with happiness and excitement instead of being critical of ourselves.
However, give yourself permission to powerfully embrace and enjoy any special moments that crosses your day; no matter what’s going on in your life or how badly you messed up.
Find the courage to embrace living fully and not just passively. Every day offers us so many of these moments.
So let’s have the courage to find and embrace the next one that comes along.