Beauty is in every waking moment throughout our hardest days and longest trials. There’s obvious beauty— a sunset after a beautiful day, the first ‘I love you’, a kiss of a newly wed husband and wife, a child being born, and God’s greatest creation: our home. But the real beauty comes from the resilience within our hearts and the overabundance of love from our souls. Downfalls and disappointments make us crave and even pray for easier, simpler times— maybe kick back and put our feet up with a cold drink in hand. We desire a break from reality because we often lack the ability to see the beauty in our everyday lives. There is beauty in every experience, we just don’t appreciate it and sometimes, we don’t even know it’s there. But when you look through life with eyes of gratitude and as if our time here is a gift, we see things we otherwise would overlook.

Our hearts are capable of so much love, why wouldn’t you use that to its full ability? The beauty I’m talking about is the beauty of our perception. When you are able to look at less than satisfactory situations and take away lessons and acknowledge your feelings in the most conscious, vulnerable sense, there is beauty. Your soul radiates beauty, so as you become steps closer to your most true essence, you will see each stepping stone is more beautiful than the last.

Looking at life as a gift makes it more precious and reminds us to look at it with pure eyes and an open heart to allow the lessons and blessings to flow in and out as they please.

Very often, I find myself saying you can only control so much, but the reality is, we can control the whole universe inside ourselves. Our actions, our reactions, our words— only occurs if we let them. We choose their magnitude, strength, and meaning. We choose our tone, intentions, and order. With that kind of control within ourselves, how come we crave more? We crave to control others— make them understand our mind, soul, and spirit. Although we have our own control and know our thoughts and intentions, we struggle with the fact others don’t think the same way we do, words get misconstrued, gestures go unnoticed, and our cry for connection goes unheard. We are in a constant battle with the society we so desperately want to fit into, even though it’s been years since I’ve wanted to fit in and belong to society or to even be understood to my deepest depths and the sense of belonging that I require as part of my core needs will have to be found elsewhere and that’s okay.

Societies form because of the fact that people blend, morph into one and sacrifice pieces of themselves in order to be a “part of something bigger than themselves”.

Maybe fear of loneliness, despair, or never having that sense of belonging drives us to make decisions that betray our soul. The thing is— you can only silence your inner being so long before it’s yelling for an awakening within you.

It’s hard to stand alone, but it’s harder to betray who you truly are.