stop and smell the violet

It does one good to just pay attention now and then.

Between my newspaper and magazines and talking with friends, it is easy to believe the wheels on our lives are about to spin off their axles at the next curve. Climate change. Incivility. Cost-of-living. Everyone seems to have a favorite horse to flog in the Calamity Sweepstakes.

My obsession these days is a bit more narcissistic. I have not fully recovered my energy after contracting whatever it was off the coast of northern Australia. The result is that I have slowly regained most of the weight I carved off last summer.

I have tried slowly transitioning back into my walking routine. But a thousand steps or so into my walk and I am ready to head back to the house. Whenever I get fixated on something like exercise, I tend to ignore what is going on around me -- especially if I am feeling as fit as the proverbial fiddle.

Last evening I decided to walk no more than 10,000 steps on the upstairs terraza that masquerades as an exercise track. Normally, I like to walk with the speed of a cruiser on patrol. Last night I was a tugboat. Lumbering along with my head down, but determined to at least get back into something of a routine.

For some reason I glanced up. And my timing was perfect. Off to the west, the sun was just setting. The sky above my house had turned violet, and there was an apricot-yellow fringe where the sun had just gone to its rest. I felt as if I had fallen into an Hawaiian postcard.

It was stunning enough that I stopped walking. When I am earning my paces, I almost never do that. But I was glad I did.

That one small moment re-centered my mind. Sure, all of the world's problems were still there. But we are daily surrounded by incalculable beauty that is there for the taking, but sometimes gets lost in our worry matrix.

One thing I truly enjoy in Mexico is that those moments are frequent. They whisper in our ear that all pain is fleeting and that the beautiful things in life are just waiting for us to enjoy them.

Reinhold Niebuhr had just the right balance in his prayer: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference."

If a simple sunset can help us do that, there is really hope for the world.