Life is all about perspective … nothing new here, I know.

This flower could be growing beside a creek or stream or a tributary of a large lake.  It’s hard to tell with a close-up of the yellow marigold that I’ve zoomed in on. My vision of the world has recently been zoomed in and microscopic from issues at my vacation rental to politics.

This morning I’m trying to lengthen my lens—open my wide-angle, look at the bigger picture as they say.

It rained yesterday in the mountains and the scent of pine is stronger than it’s been for weeks. The grass greener and the flowers brighter.

Last year I was packing for a month in Paris. Since then France has witnessed terror attacks that shook the country – one as recent as two weeks ago in Nice. But one has to remember that France was decimated in two world wars. The French are strong! They will focus on their art and architecture, their music, their wine, their joi’ de vivre – Joy of Life. They will mourn and grieve and bury and stick their middle finger in the air and focus on the good life.

I wish we had something similar in the U.S. Instead we seem to be growing angrier and more fearful and revengeful. We seem to be a country ready to implode.

Perspective!

The stream I sit beside is small. It is man-made. It is perhaps two-and-a half feet wide and a few inches deep – barely enough to soak my tennis shoe, not even my ankle. The rocks have been set in place by hand to meander through a courtyard in the condo complex where I’m staying. There is also a man-made water fall down the way that creates the movement of the stream, and the sound is relaxing and calming in spite of being “fake”.

It reminds me that life is what we make of it – how we view it – what we choose to do with it. We don’t have to put our head in the sand and ignore it. We don’t have to narrow our focus and be so myopic that we grow self-involved, self-centered and see only our place in the universe. We also don’t have to pretend to understand the whole of it or feel we have to control it.

There are times when we need to look closely, even to look inside.

There are times to broaden and try to see life through everyone else’s eyes.

And there are times to close your eyes and just listen … to the babbling stream, bubbling along in peaceful harmony with nature … and forget for a while where we are.

Joi’ de Vivre

Joy of Life – amidst the chaos of the world.