Monday, November 1, 2010

Sleeping Beauties and the Trail of Happiness


Saturday, October 23, 1:35 p.m.


On down the road there is another lookout which is clearly paved with parking spaces.


So I pull over to take in the view from Moran Point, at 7278 feet off the Grand Canyon walls.


As I'm remembering to "stay on the trail"...



...I grow weary of a short 3 foot man-made wall that seems to be in my way.



The explorer-adventurer gets the best of me and, jumping off the wall in my spring coil shoes, I tumble over bruising the heck out of my knees and nearly damaging my camera. I guess if you have to fall at the Grand Canyon, you can be grateful it was only 3 feet...and not a couple of thousand!

OK, back to the loftier thoughts...which we all sometimes stumble and fall from...despite the signs!


Percy Bysshe Shelley is quoted as saying: " Appreciation makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful....It exalts the beauty of that which is beautiful....It strips the veil of familiarity from the word, and lays bare and naked sleeping beauty, which is in the spirit of its forms."


So I'm thinking about the trail of happiness and appreciation for all things beautiful and grand that I'm leaving behind...in my mental wake, so to speak.



And I wonder about another trail of happiness I can create.


I wonder if I've told the people that matter to me, just how much I'm grateful for them being in my life.


Or, even the people who don't seem to matter that much to me...the bank clerk, the checkout gal, the flight attendant, the auto mechanic, etc.


...have I told them just how beautiful they really are?


How magnificent? How lovely?


And how very much they are appreciated in my life? That I wouldn't be able to be standing right here, without them?


What sleeping beauties do we all have in our lives...


...waiting to come to life with a kiss of gratitude?


What a trail of happiness we'd leave behind by noticing and acknowledging them all!

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