The Purpose of Beauty

I drove my sea green, 2002 Honda Odyssey from Pennsylvania to Colorado. I took a route through the very center of Kansas, splitting the state in two with the grey line on my GPS.

My speed wouldn’t change for hours due to the sincere lack of anything at all. Due to the strange time of night, everything was grey. At times it was hard to tell where fields ended and the sky began. An occasional tumbleweed would jump across the road, hit the grill of my car and spray thousands of dried twigs over the otherwise uninterrupted road.

The van was in cruise control. I lost track of time, unaware that my playlist had ended and the sound of the motor, tires, and air conditioning were all I was hearing.

I marveled at the Colorado state sign as I passed out of Kansas. It’s reflective blue and white surface jumped out of the endless grey. I had been driving for twenty hours, only stopping for gas. Needless to say, I was exhausted.

The sky grew lighter behind me. The grey slowly changed into pink and orange and blue. The sky became a perfect, unbroken gradient of warm colors.

As the sun continued to rise, I saw a scattering of thin clouds in the distance. They were far away and small, almost invisible. The clouds were completely motionless, seemingly unaffected by the constant wind of eastern Colorado.

I was transfixed by the clouds. They were the only irregularity in the predictable landscape. The clouds formed dark shadows underneath as the sky brightened. They slowly grew as I drew closer.

In my life, there have been few moments of flawless, ordinary beauty. What happened next was one of them.

Nothing in the scene changed and yet, it was instantly different. The clouds revealed their true nature. They were not clouds at all. They were the snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains.

The light from the sun and the diminishing distance between myself and the mountains fed my eyes the true story of what was before me. Rays of the sun had shot out, traveled 92 million miles, and bounced off the mountains I was approaching. They traveled for the singular purpose of disappearing on the back of my eye and imprinting themselves on my memory.

Related posts:

One of the responsibilities of a junior cyber security analyst is identifying and preventing cyber threats to a business or other entity. You might be responsible for tasks like developing threat…

When you hear the phrase, The city that never sleeps, New York City immediately comes to mind. With the bustling, fast- paced life that the city and its people lives in, time seems to go by quickly…

Natural Beaded Row hair extensions are a safe and comfortable option for clients who want longer, thicker hair without the use of harsh chemicals, heat, or adhesives. We'll explore the benefits of NBR hair extensions and help determine whether they're right for you.