Moments of Beauty

They Can’t Be Captured, Only Felt

Several years ago, my wife, Marilyn, gave me a camera for Christmas. At first, I thought it an odd

choice for someone losing his eyesight, but it became one of the most thoughtful gifts I have ever received. The camera trained me to search for beauty, and the more I looked, the more I found it. Like this lone sailboat on the horizon. Every time I see it, I wonder where it is headed, or if its occupants are simply letting the wind carry them where it will. Perhaps that is the beauty: not knowing, but imagining the possibilities. Photography made me pay attention, and in paying attention I discovered that beauty was everywhere.

When my vision changed and photography slipped out of reach, I allowed the deliberate act of searching for beauty to slip away with it. That doesn’t mean I no longer see it, only that it’s less deliberate in my life. Writing this now, I realize how much the act of seeking was part of the seeing.

Today, I am more likely to walk along a forest trail with my eyes focused on the ground, not the wonder all around me. An unfortunate byproduct of a visual impairment.

I was hiking with a good friend the other day, and as we paused on the trail he said, “When I stop to take a drink of water, I like to use that moment to do a 360-degree turn, and look at the trees above me.”

“What a great idea,” I said.

That simple practice stayed with me. It made me realize the moments of beauty I miss every day. Not the ones that can be captured through a camera lens, but felt in the heart. A piece of music, my dog Skye curled against my side, small things in the background that add the essence to our life.

It’s interesting how my mind looks for ways to “make it happen.” To recapture the spirit of searching for beauty I learned through photography. I thought about keeping a list of beautiful moments each day. There’s nothing wrong with that, it does help you pay attention, but it also risks turning wonder into a chore. That instinct comes from old career habits, where metrics defined success. Four moments today, five tomorrow, six the next. Useful in business, maybe, but not in life’s quiet wonders.

In my career, there was never a shortage of metrics to measure success. That meant there were probably more successes, and that’s a good thing, I suppose. But this isn’t about outcomes or the future. It’s about this moment, and whether I’m awake enough to notice the beauty already here.

Too often, I’m not.

As I sat with this in my journal, I realized what I’ve really been missing is not the beauty itself, but the intention to look for it. The act of searching was always what opened me to seeing. Maybe the point isn’t whether I find five or six moments in a day, but whether I remember to pause long enough to let one appear.

In the end, the real gift is learning to notice life’s moments, whether it’s a quiet forest, a sailboat on the water, or a passage of music that lingers in the heart. That camera Marilyn gave me years ago taught me how to search for beauty, but the greater lesson was this: beauty doesn’t need to be captured, it only needs to be felt.