The abundance of beautiful, pretty, and stunning things in this world makes ordinary moments blossom into something much greater. If you just look around, you can find beauty in anything. I guess the cliché 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' contains truth.

To me, true beauty consists of a mother hand in hand with her children despite the shopping bags in her arms and the tote on her shoulder. You can see the love and protection she possesses for her children. This includes her frightened facial expression as she flinches when they cross the intersection of the parking lot and her daughter loosens her grip. I find beauty in a father crouched down in conversation with his son about the types of ice cream the truck has and the joy in both of them when he buys the ice cream, hands it to his son, and watches his son smile as he eats it. The beauty present when in the library, a person’s laptop dies, they cannot find an outlet, and someone else notices and takes a new seat so that the other can have their outlet. Or, when a girl walks to class while scrolling on her phone and a boy walks the opposite way but looks at her for a couple seconds because he thinks she is stunning but cannot muster up the courage to speak to her. In both the girl’s demeanor and the boy’s apprehension contains beauty and innocence. In the morning when a girl looks in the mirror, smiles, and walks out despite if she felt she looked presentable or not is beauty.

During class, the professor says something that sparks a memory, idea, or joke between two classmates and once the words come out of the professor’s mouth, they both look at each other and laugh. A student who failed a test, walks out of the room with a distraught expression and does not know what to do. The student decides to go to the professor’s office hours and when he reaches the door to the office, he take a deep breath. Before he can reach the doorknob, the door flings open and the professor says smiling, “Hey how are you? Come in.” The professor’s welcoming presence that prompted him to greet the student rather than the student walking in while nervous and afraid is beautiful. The most mundane actions become beautiful if we look at them as so.

The connections we hold contains the beauty we all search for. Sometimes, these connections do not need to be with another person; the connection we have with ourselves becomes the strongest and most valuable connection we as humans will ever have. Once we possess that strong base in ourselves, we develop the power to not just make connections with others, but make worthwhile, life changing experiences with others. True beauty is seeing the beauty in others and normal moments, as well as appreciating the beauty in ourselves.