I almost didn’t take this picture.
There wasn’t anything particularly exciting happening.
I wasn’t somewhere new.
There wasn’t a perfect, wide-open view of the sunset.
There were just trees.
A lot of them, actually. 😂
Branches everywhere. Power lines near the bottom. One tree that looks like it gave up on having leaves before everybody else.
And somewhere behind all of it, the sky was glowing.
So I stopped.
And I looked up.
The sunset wasn’t perfectly framed. The trees blocked most of it. I couldn’t see the horizon, and there was no way to get a “better” view without going somewhere else.
But I didn’t really want a better view.
I liked this one.
Because the light kept finding little places to come through.
Between the branches.
Through the leaves.
Around the trees.
Little pieces of gold tucked into all that darkness.
And the longer I stood there looking at it, the more there was to see.
There was still blue hiding at the top of the sky.
Soft pink mixed into the clouds.
Bright yellow and orange burning through the thickest parts of the trees.
Living branches tangled together with bare ones.
None of it was neat.
None of it was unobstructed.
And somehow, that made it prettier.
I think sometimes we get so used to looking for the perfect view that we forget to appreciate the one we actually have.
We want the sunset without the power lines.
The sky without the branches.
The picture without anything getting in the way.
But maybe everything in the way is part of the picture, too.
Maybe the trees weren’t blocking the sunset.
Maybe they were showing me where the light was.
So, I took the picture.
Not because it was perfect.
Just because I looked up at the right moment and thought,
Oh.
That’s pretty.
And sometimes, that’s reason enough.
—Destiny
P.S. When was the last time you stopped to look at something ordinary long enough to realize it was actually kind of beautiful?
