Beauty in the small things

It is funny the things you take for granted in your own culture.  Then when you move to a new place, things can become shockingly uncomfortable.  It isn't always the things you would expect either.  For me, one of those things is the beauty of a place.  Being from East Tennessee, then moving to Cochabamba, the foothills of the Andes Mountains spoils you.

One of my first blog posts after moving here was about how hard it was for me because this city is GROSS!  Santa Cruz, I imagine, must have been a beautiful place at one point in time.  It was palm trees, lagunas, and sand dunes.  Now, it is an extremely large, overcrowded city with all the lagunas covered up, and the sand has been level out.  Blah.  It gets really hot, or really cold here.  And there is little escaping either in our concrete houses with no heating or air conditioning.  When it rains, which it does a lot, this is the tropics, the city turns into a mud pit.  Uck.  I have struggled many days with wanting to be here, simply for the aesthetics of the scenery I pass by everyday.  I can't even see any mountains from here.  Don't even get me started on the amount of trash this city has EVERYWHERE.  I have a hard time comprehending why anyone would choose to live here.

One day, as I was expressing my disgust for the place I now live in, Drew was kind in patient and shared something I had never thought of before.  He said that sometimes the big picture isn't what we want it to be, but we can always look for beauty in the small things, and be able to find joy in those things.  I shrugged his comments off for the moment, not wanting to admit this place could have anything beautiful in it.

Last week, I found myself mesmerized by a flower.  This wasn't the first time I had seen a flower of this sort, but it was the first time I was really able to appreciate its beauty and I had unknowingly faded out the voice of the person talking to me to enjoy the flower that was by the sidewalk.  As I snapped back into the conversation, I realized what had just happened.  I was able to enjoy that flower, and truly find joy in its beauty.  As a matter of fact, I was so taken by its simple beauty that I had forgotten what was going around me.

In a surprising way, I have found myself thankful for this time in Santa Cruz.  One of those reasons is that i am thankful because I have time to appreciate and find joy in the small things, that would otherwise get looked over.