Commonplace, everyday things

I got to see both of those things. Both photos are by me. I love modern cameras.

The first was in Scotland, in 2013. The second was in New Mexico, in 2019. Those cows are not normal (in my personal experience), but the other is a plain-old view. Both sorts of conditions are there, for some people, every day, and have been for centuries.

Seeing with those thoughts in mind can help with gratitude and abundance. Think of people from other places who have never seen the plants or trees or animals you can easily see on an everyday day.

I hope you see beauty today.

Normal or exotic?
photos by Sandra Dodd
P.S. It can also be fun to imagine having time-traveling relatives visit and see your house and collections and gadgets. People from a hundred years ago would be as interested as people from the future. Appreciate your stuff!

Laundry is love

Summer MacDonald wrote:

Laundry is love. I love each person whose pants I am washing and folding. I love each meal I have shared with my family, that needed cloths and towels to wipe up the spills afterwards.

I love seeing my daughters choose their clothes each day and the combinations of colors and patterns they choose to express themselves and their body confidence. When I wash those combinations, I remember the joy they felt that day and I smile.

I love watching "special shows" with my eldest daughter on the night of laundry day (that are too mature for her sisters) while I fold pants, shirts, towels and match the socks. We talk about deeper topics and laugh about deeper jokes.

Laundry is the little thing in my week that represents the bigger beauty of my life that is found in the simplest things.

—Summer MacDonald

Can laundry be fun?
photo by Sandra Dodd

Optimistic happy people

Alex Polikowsky wrote:

Surround yourself with optimistic happy people. Do not engage in conversation when people are complaining about their children or husbands. If a friend comes to complain about her kids I try to turn around and point out to them how that characteristic could be good or some other great thing about their children. Or I change the subject.

Look at what you have, not what you do not have. If all you focus is in negative things that is all you will see. If you always look for the positive slowly you will, more and more, see the positive and the beauty around you and that will become who you are.

—Alex Polikowsky

SandraDodd.com/alex/optimism
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Positive and sweet

Find beauty and hope wherever it can be found. Say and think sweet things about your children. If people can be positive and sweet, it doesn't matter so much where they do it. Being better is better.

Deposit the good stuff.
photo by Jesper Conrad
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Once upon a time...

Ben Lovejoy wrote:

Once upon a time in the hamlet of Columbia in the province of Carolina, South, lived a woman of extraordinary gifts and beauty and her beloved husband of two decades and two years. The couple had two wonderful boys who shared their lives with them along with the family’s domesticated animals. The family lived peacefully together, enjoying their lives of travel, friends, and the pleasures from living life so simply. They encouraged one another’s passions and shared many as a family as well as having some of their very own. They loved hearing stories borne out of those passions and frequently wove tales that created interest, laughter, and joy from telling and hearing them. . . . .
The boys lived and learned freely. Their home became the foundation of their strength and learning and passions and love—it became their stepping stone to the freedom of expression and living and imagination that both boys had created for themselves. From their mother, they received their creativity, their curiosity, and their love of travel. From their father, they received their athleticism, their patience, and their interest in telling stories. From their parents, they received unconditional love and undying support.

—Ben Lovejoy

The middle part can be read here:
The Stories of Our Families
photo by Chelsea Leigh Thurman

Let light shine through you.

See how that cut-out affected the table, and the light? It's in Wales, but we can see it wherever we are today. See how that little jack-o-lantern ornament affected so much of the world?

I love the light through that orange bottle. Beautiful. I like the pumpkin, or gourd, too.

Janine saw all of that, and took a photo. I saw that photo, and sent it to you.

Beauty and patterns are all around us.

Let light shine through you.
SandraDodd.com/curiosity
photo by Janine Davies

Generosity and appreciation

Holly drove me to a neighborhood near her house where she has seen peacocks, roaming. We spotted four, but this one was up high in the sunshine.

Schuyler Waynforth once drove me where she was pretty sure we would see kangaroos. There were many; I was in awe.

I have driven visitors to see prairie dogs, and to find tumbleweeds.

What is commonplace for one person might be a memorable moment of beauty for others.

SandraDodd.com/happiness
photo by Sandra Dodd

A different angle

Something near your house, or in your town, that you see every day, would be exotic and beautiful to someone from another part of the world. Two things near your house, combined by looking at one while you're seeing part of another, might be worth a photograph and some loving thoughts.

Find beauty where you are today, whether you're a tourist or in your own kitchen.


SandraDodd.com/angles
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a roofline near the road in Stroud, Gloucestershire,
in the Cotswolds. Click it to see the larger image.

Acts of caring

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

There are times in life that you won't feel like you can take care of others around you as well as you'd like. You need nurturing yourself and other people's neediness starts to be draining on you.

I've felt that, too.

But I've also found that if I focus more on "seeing" my kids with loving-eyes focus, consciously choose to pay attention to what I love about them, then I actually begin to feel more nourished and strengthened by them, and by the very acts of caring for them.

—Pam Sorooshian
(original)

Beauty
photo by Rippy Dusseldorp

Swimming in that water

It's fun to watch a fish. It might stay right where it is, however they do that, for a long time. It might change directions. It might dart away.

Try to see your child similarly. He's living in his own environment, in air, maybe walking on the floor or on the ground. He's there whether you're looking or not. He might stay in one place for a long time, or dart off somewhere.

Be at peace with small choices children make. See the beauty of them.

(Be at peace, but be ready to dart after them!)
Desire to learn
photo by Heather Burditt

Can't see everything

No matter how far you look or imagine, you can't see everything. Children are growing in a living world.

When you look ahead, as far as you can see, look for beauty.

When you look behind, as far as you can, remember the good things.

SandraDodd.com/abundance

photo by Stacie Mahoe

Softer, sweeter moments

Jenny Cyphers wrote:

It's such a big part of our culture to get it done now, fix it all now, make it happen now, do, do, do, do. Sometimes what life really requires is calm and patience. A very valuable thing to learn in life is to how to take care of ourselves and others during times of stress and times that aren't ideal and wonderful.

I think that's part of "stopping and smelling the roses." If you don't take that time, you miss some pretty wonderful bits of life. When there is stress and other negative influences happening around us, it's even MORE important to take that time to seek out the beauty and the softness and the sweet and light and happy things.

—Jenny Cyphers

SandraDodd.com/moment
photo by Cátia Maciel

Accept temporary changes

Sometimes a familiar place, or thing, or person, is warm and soft and safe. Other times there might be special circumstances, or danger, or extra beauty.

Try to model for your children an acceptance of change, and an appreciation of the days when things are calm and simple. Model being more careful when such factors as humidity, temperature or temperament come into play.

SandraDodd.com/change
photo by Vlad Gurdiga

Cliff wall

Realities aren't always easily categorized. Where do these goats live? Turkey. Ester Siroky saw them, when she, her husband, and youngest child passed through. The goats have a shelter that's up against a cliff, against which is built a wall as high as the natural hill, maybe. I'm limited by what the photo shows. I like it, but there are still mysteries.

Appreciating the intersection of a natural wall and a manmade wall would not be ruined by knowing of other walls (if any, or fences) around those goats.

A wall isn't always an obstacle. It might be a shelter, a protection, and a thing of beauty.

It's possible, and it's fine, to appreciate part of a song, a film, a painting, a story, a life, without fully understanding the depth and breadth of the whole thing. A part of a thing is also a thing.


Same goats, out by water
photo by Ester Siroky

Beauty

"Choose to look at the beauty around you and to see life and people through loving eyes."

—Alex Polikowsky

Sandra's addition: "... to see life and people" and fancy chickens, cupcakes, frost, sleeping puppies and your favorite mug as beautiful.

SandraDodd.com/alex/optimism
photo by Helene McNeill

Beauty and usefulness

The world isn't sorted into serious and funny, or beautiful and dull. Things are often quite mixed up, and changing with the moment, and the light, and the seasons. New things get old.

Some radio stations (which aren't as vital as they once were) play songs that are sixty years old, or more. A hundred years ago, 1920 provided the first public radio broadcasts of a news program (in Detroit, Michigan). A college radio station aired music, a sporting event and concerts (Schenectedy, New York). An opera was broadcast for the twenty radios that could receive it (August 2020, Buenos Aries, Argentina).

Our receipt of sound is more varied now, and we can bring in humor, debate, tragedy, and re-reuns of those things from earlier times. Text and images have been added. We have more choices than we have time to choose them, these days.

Look for beauty and usefulness. Choose joy and uplift, from the river of output that pours around us.

SandraDodd.com/emotion
photo by Sandra Dodd, in Liverpool one time

Stories of radio in 1920, which I looked up not knowing I really was writing this 100 years after initial public broadcasts, came from Wikipedia's History of Radio page. Good coincidence, for 2020. We are living in the flow of history.__

Chairs, mountains, puff-toys

Accept and admire beauty if you can, instead of dismissing things as "just..."
      Just a stump.
             Just a dandelion.

Can you see the beauty in the stump? It might be a safe place to stand after a rain. To a child you love, it might be a chair or a mountain.

Dandelions are flowers that make puff-toys for children to blow on. They grow without our help. They might be the only colorful flower you'll see, some days. If a child loves them, can you follow?

SandraDodd.com/just
photo by Sandra Dodd

Following happily

There's great peace and beauty in a child who is happy to follow a parent, wherever the path is leading.

Human development and reality tend toward that period of life coming to an end, someday, so appreciate it when it's happening, and be understanding when paths diverge.

SandraDodd.com/being
photo by Cátia Maciel

Quiet and still

There are seasons and reasons that can disturb sleep and peace. Find moments of beauty and of calm, of stillness and dark, when you can breathe more deeply, speak more softly, and rest.

Five minutes of calm and of gratitude can reset your soul.


When you breathe
photo by Nicole Kenyon

Backyard peace and beauty

This photo inspires me to remind people that there can be quiet contemplation next to silly play, and you might have brief solitude, even if someone sees you and takes a picture.

There can be peace in the backyard.

Even in the most candid of mom-photos, a kid's sleeves can impressively match the trampoline.

Observe, appreciate, slow down, accept.

Being Home: SandraDodd.com/being/home
photo by Sarah S.