Sometimes I am stopped dead in my tracks by beauty by something that doesn’t come from within me but something outside of me. Sometimes a sunrise. I wake before dawn and make coffee and walk out on my back porch. The sun rises with golden rose touches on the clouds. I watch. The sun says “don’t think, just watch” and the sun rises over the ocean, over the mountains and the sleeping city. I drink my coffee in silence. The sun would rise with or without me. Sometimes a simple blooming lily in the garden next to the building where I live. Age has slowed me down and I notice things that younger, I would have sped right by. Its blossom is small but glorious and I pause and bow to beauty surrounded by traffic and horns and people catching the bus. Knowing this flower would bloom with or without me…with or without the people catching the bus. I know it won’t make any difference in their life or mine but sometimes A simple unexpected beauty can quiet the ugline