I've spent the past 2 months travelling, mostly for work - sleeping in hotel rooms and pulling clothes from a suitcase. sleeping lots and sometimes very little, and doing yoga on concrete floors in basements and on the carpet of hotel suites beside my bar fridge.
i woke up early this morning - my last full day on the road (sort of) in a while - and saw the most beautiful, perfectly stunning sunset. there were a few clouds, while the sun slowly crested, with that perfect orangesicle glow. it peeked out from behind the mountains, and - in case the orangesicle glow from behind mountains wasn't enough - palm trees dotted the horizon, sillouetted by the day's early light.
i stopped. and stood. and stared. and after almost a week in Vegas with flashing lights and never ending parties and paper cards of escorts having been abandoned everywhere you walk, it was refreshing to stare out a window, and see no lights, other than mother nature's. i realized i was involuntarily taking long, deep, meditative breaths - that's what nature forces within me, a sort of innate 'yoga' for the soul. then, before getting back into bed, i took a photo of the light (of course knowing that a photo never does nature it's due justice), so i could remember the feeling. as much as was humanly possible.
when i got up - at a more reasonable hour, as no one on earth should rise before the sun (in my world, anyways) - i took a look out the window again. being able to see mountains and palm trees in the same field of vision is a pretty spectacular treat, after all. it was only then that I realized, in my field of vision was the rooftop of a part of the hotel - amok with ducts and vents and all sorts of industrial metal doohickey's - ruining my view. all that beauty, totally polluted by (hu)man made metal things...
and - let it be known - I adore and often seek out lots of 'ugly' things in life. abandoned buildings; run down restaurants; old toys and leftover or forgotten childhood favourites. I have a soft spot for those things that people find to be eyesores - and a piece of my heart dedicated to the memories that run down and forgotten places and things, hold. but when it comes to my nature, I most often like it pure a simple - to be surrounded by all nature. straight up.
but it occurred to me that this morning - partially in my morning 'i should still be sleeping - and damn you prior hotel room inhabitant who set the alarm for 4:30am' haze, but also partially because #LIFELESSONS - i hadn't noticed the metal theme park obstructing the glorious sun. i had been so consumed with awe, and had focused so hard on seeing the colour and the mountains, and had felt such gratitude for what was in front of me, that my brain totally blocked out what was in front, in front of me.
there's got to be some brain science in there, that i'll let you discover on your own.
and so here's the thing - I woke up, and had a glinting moment of anger which yelled (quietly, in my head), 'I WISH I HAD AN UNOBSTRUCTED VIEW OF THOSE GLORIOUS MOUNTAINS!' and then I realized - I didn't need one. when my brain wasn't thinking so hard, wasn't analyzing every tiny detail about the situation at hand, I was happy. I was at peace. I was able to see past the metal and bad paint (honestly, who chooses beige on purpose??). I was able to breathe in the sun and mountains and palm trees and beauty and HEART HEALING CALM and breathe out all of the other stuff - without thinking for one moment about anything else.
so then I have to consider - is my lesson to stop thinking so much? is my lesson that if I look past the proverbial metal vents, there will always be a sunset or mountains or glorious breath and peace? is my lesson to relax, calm down, and see things for what they are worth? is it to learn to start seeing the 'ugly' as a part of the beauty - that you can't have one without the other? or, is my lesson encompassing all of those things?
my subconscious brain is likely three steps ahead on this one - likely already knows the lesson and is simply waiting for my conscious mind and my heart and soul to catch up. but I do know this - whatever the science shows, whatever it means, I was able to adjust my eyesight, and see just the sun capping the mountains and the tiny green shrubs scattered around them, the next time I looked up from my hotel room desk. I was able to focus on the wind in the leaves of the palm trees in front of the beige (seriously. BEIGE.) building behind it while practicing my yoga. and maybe that means I will be a tiny bit closer to analyzing a little bit less next time I see a young girl dancing her heart out in a pink dress (stop feminizing everything, self!). and maybe I'll be able to enjoy and breath in the the laughter of the kids in the pool over the grating noise of the lawn mower, next time I open the sliding door (stop being upset with noise pollution, self!). and maybe I'll look in the mirror and see the renewed sparkle in my eyes, and the (relative) weightlessness in my shoulders that I haven't seen for at least a year and a half, instead of the bags under my eyes from sleeplessness, or the exhaustion in my face from stress and sadness - and I will see a whole, beautiful, perfectly imperfect being. a sum more valuable than it's beautiful (and ugly) parts.
until then, I've got mountains, and sunshine, and palm trees and the hot breeze. so until then, I'll take that.