Everyday Canvas

Home, Silence and Beauty

For "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" 

Prompt: "To me, there's no better feeling then arriving home." Use this in your Blog entry today.

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“There is no place like home,” says Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, meaning Kansas. She may have a point there; however, the definition of home depends on the person who uses the word ‘home.’ To a dedicated sailor, home may be the open seas. To a surgeon, it may mean the operating room. To a lawyer, it may mean the courthouse. To an author it may mean finding the right words for the right project. To most of us, home can be the place where we relax and sleep at night.

In my younger years, home was wherever I happened to be. In old age, home is the place where I have my things, my books and objects like photos and items that carry memories. In other places, such as other peoples’ homes, markets, or even the beach--which was my favorite outdoor place--nowadays fill me with a sense of having fallen into some other world, similar or adjacent to my own, and one from which I wish be pitched back.

I guess home is not a place but, when encountered and experienced, a feeling of belonging that gives a person a sigh of relief.

Yet, at this moment in my life, it is an actual house that feels home to me. This may change in years, whatever years may bring, just as the idea of home has changed so drastically in my past.

For: "Space Blog" 

Prompt: From Nixie Martell cheerleader ’s "Gifted by Nature " 
“Go placidly amid the noise and thy haste and remember what peace there may be silence.” (by Max Ehrmann)

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Beauty not only means aesthetic pleasure but also harmony, and appreciating the hidden or slightly visible beauties around us, in reverence, points to an emotionally and spiritually evolved human being.

We experience our surroundings with our senses and find pleasure in what we see and feel. This type of experiencing needs silence, especially the silencing of our internal judges and critics, worries, and that flood of unnecessary thoughts. In other words, we need not be distracted by anything else, internally or externally such our smartphones, so we can pay attention to, observe, and delight in our surroundings, in their lines, colors, sounds, smells, patterns, textures, and meanings.

Appreciating whatever we can appreciate enables us to come closer what is sacred, that is deserving of reverence and respect. It also sharpens our senses and awareness. This is because beauty strikes just about everything indiscriminately. We just need the silence and the eyes to see it.