I am lucky to be able to live in a place that has no scarcity of different flowers and plants. The truth is that I never used to appreciate flowers and that it was only after I started to do photography that I started to notice the small things, like the fragrance that comes from them. I didn’t know that flowers could smell so alluring. I must have been blind.
Peering into the world of little flowers adds a new dimension to my experience. It is like the stuff of dreams. Imagine that you are shrunk to the size of a beetle and start to walk through a small patch of flowers. That is how it feels like doing macro photography among these delicate and beautiful life forms. Such a sight to behold! Hopefully, this perspective will inspire you to experience and see the world for yourself. Some of the most wonderful things out there in nature and in life are free for you to explore anyway.
A friend once asked me, “Why do you always seem to make a place more scenic than it really is in your photographs?” She said that whenever she went to any of those places, they were always dull and dreary and just didn’t seem as nice. What she said made me ponder about what beauty really means. I used to think that the world was bare, gloomy, and monotonous. There was a time when I was always living in my head and living in a world so industrious that I did not stop and really look around me. I would pass by the most beautiful sunset or lily without even taking a glance. Beauty was all about success and material stuff in my eyes. I would talk about how beautiful this car or that house was, and I would miss what the world was showing me in front of my eyes; I was so preoccupied with material things that I couldn’t see what was truly beautiful.
The fact is what we think of as reality could be an illusion. We form our concept of beauty through the filters of our accumulated experiences and preferences. We might not even see the same colors; your perception of red might be different from mine. How many of us can really see things the way they really are? Most of the time, the mind distorts reality because it has a tendency to generalize. There are advantages and disadvantages to these workings of the mind, but let’s not discuss the disadvantages for now and focus on the advantages we have. The main advantage is that we have a choice in every moment. We have a choice to focus on the beautiful or the ugly.
Who we are is what our state of being is. The challenge is to be conscious enough to be positive so that we are happy and joyful all the time and the world will reflect back to us all the existent joyous and beautiful things in our lives. The converse is also true. If we are depressed and weary, we may automatically focus on the depressing and ugly things in life. It doesn’t just stop there. Our thoughts have a cumulative effect: All the negative thoughts will attract more and more of the same, and we will end up so far down the road that it will be very difficult to get back.
Let’s take gratitude, one of the most powerful emotions in life, as an example. If we are grateful for being alive, we will start to see the splendor of life in all other living things such as trees, flowers, animals, and other fellow humans; we will be grateful for just being here on earth and soaking up all the beautiful sights our world has to offer. That is one of the greatest treasures of life – to be able to witness the intricacy of creation.
Admittedly, we might not be able to be in a meditative state all the time due to the distractions of our thoughts, but we can start the process of awareness by filtering our minds through understanding. The light of understanding will dispel the darkness of judgmental thoughts and allow us to see things as they really are. This understanding will make all the sights in the world more vibrant, more picturesque, and full of vitality; even the darkest and gloomiest scene will become the most beautiful contrast one can see and appreciate.
Understanding this essence of beauty will allow us to see the world in new ways. The flowers that we pass by every day will suddenly jump out at us, beckoning us to just stop, notice, and realize how beautiful our world is. If we can really see, we will notice that wherever we go, we will always see something beautiful and interesting.
How does one understand the miracle of a flower? If we are aware of the intelligence of the source of creation flowing around us, we will start to notice the miracle, the miracle of seeing the potential of a whole forest in a single seed, the miracle of seeing a seed sprouting and blossoming with all the aid and support in its life energy from the universe. If we have a conscious mind, we will see that we are well taken care of – taken care of by all the support of the intelligence that sustains all life. If we are not able to identify the results of this creative power from the source of life, then I am afraid that there is nothing more to see.
We are all here on a journey of exploration, with the world being our playground. In the end, this journey is not about the things we own because we cannot own a thing forever; it is about the way and experience of beauty exploration.