“It’s always something.” Have you heard that expression? The people that say it usually mean it’s something bad. What if the opposite were true? What if it was always something and it kept getting better and better? What if we actually are always moving towards the next most beautiful thing? What if believing in the goodness of the world actually created more and more goodness? It is so easy to look around us and see what is wrong. What if we made and kept making the choice to see all of the beauty in life? You know it’s there. You see it in the bare limbs of the oak trees when you’re walking the dog in the morning before work. You see it on your wife’s face as she puzzles over how to get the lid off of the jar of olives. You see it in the kindergartener who runs to hug her grandmother as you sit in your car behind the school bus in the afternoon. What if what you see then, in these precious moments of being awake to beauty, is the something that it always is? What if we are all, at every moment, moving toward that something? And what if that something is so stunning, so loving, so beautiful, so good that we can’t even imagine it at this point in time in our limited minds? The world is always changing. The seasons come and go. The moon weaves through her cycles again and again.  We are at the beginning of a new season. The season when the trees are stark against the sky and we bundle up and move through the world slowly as we gather our strength for the cold. We are in winter, going towards spring. We are always going toward something. It is so easy to believe that we are going towards something hard and devastating and awful. But maybe the opposite is true. Maybe we have reached a turning point in our collective lives, a turning point that leads us toward something wholly, gorgeously magnificent. Give yourself a gift this season. As you walk through your winter days give yourself the time to reflect on the something beautiful that is always present in your life. Give yourself the gift of believing in goodness. It really is a choice we each have. And it might be the most important choice we ever make. It is always something. You can be that something. You can be the something beautiful just by pausing and noticing the pink winter sky at sunset. You can be the something beautiful just by sitting quietly and watching the birds feeding out your window. You can be the something beautiful by playing a board game with your teenager and making him hot chocolate to sip while the snow comes down in your neighborhood. It is always something, and that something is us. It is the way we choose to show up in the world. It is the way we listen quietly to the voice that comes from our hearts. It is the beauty that is all around us that is us. Turn off the news for a night and listen for the stillness of the heartbeat of the world.  The world is going someplace it has never gone before. And it is going there quietly. It is going to a place where everything beautiful that ever was is alive and free to express itself. It is going to a place where goodness brings goodness. You are that goodness. You are that beauty. Give the present of presence to yourself. Embrace the season before us with all the deliciousness it holds.

This article was first printed in Vital Signs in the Daily Progress December 2014