Dewitt Jones’ talk “Extraordinary Visions!” made an everlasting impression on me when I first experienced it in Salt Lake City during my “Covey years’.
Since then, I have enjoyed his weekly ‘Celebration Photo’ emails, celebrating what’s right with the world.
Today’s quote caught my eye because on Saturday we celebrated my grandson’s birthday in Stellenbosch. One of my highlights was a quiet walk in the garden and spending time with this beautiful white rose.
Today, Dewitt Jones wrote:
“If I could stop time
and contemplate the true beauty
of a given moment,
my eyes would widen and my jaw would drop.
(Wait, I can do that! That’s why I photograph!)”
– Dewitt Jones
On Saturday, it was as if time stopped for me at the rose, thinking about the simplicity yet complexity of the beauty I was looking at. It was a ‘slow down’ moment. It was “rose time’.
And even though the rose will die soon, to quote John Keats, “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”
It’s not about how many minutes I was with the rose. But then I paused, that I was there in the moment, that matters. Impact does not come from how long something takes. It comes from what we experience.
What if we slowed down more often in our everyday life and observed the beauty, simplicity, yet complexity of the moments we share with a flower, a vehicle, an airplane, a computer, a mobile phone, our body, and more importantly, with the people we are within the moment?
What if we could imagine a white rose to frame the face of the person we are with – be that a family member, friend, associate, colleague, someone in our team, our ‘boss’, a stranger – and look beyond their eyes, ears, nose, and colour of their skin and see them in their complex completeness as a human being, admiring who we are looking at, knowing that one day, like the rose, their living days will be over?
As will be ours…
Wishing us all a week of amazement