fall stillness

Yesterday I went for a bike ride. I brought my camera along to capture the beauty of my favorite season…autumn. The vibrant colors of the leaves and plants were incredible. I loved watching the wind blow the leaves through the air. I found a spot on the trail where I was hoping to capture the dancing leaves. The wind was still. I sat there for a long time, just waiting for the wind to pick up. Nothing. I grew impatient and decided to take a shot when the next biker rode past and made the leaves on the ground blow. Nobody came. Finally after waiting too long, I looked across the bike path and saw this pond in the woods. I walked over and saw a beautiful reflection of the scene I was surrounded by. To me, the vantage point from the still water pond was better than leaf dancing. I took a moment to embrace the beauty and snapped several shots. As I rode my bike home, I thought about how I kept waiting for the wind to create a beautiful scene for me, when there was already beauty waiting to be captured in the stillness of the pond. Then I thought to myself how I often get so focused on something that I miss the beauty that is already inherently apart of life. I feel that all too often in life, we scramble to find or create meaning through some means outside ourselves…or we just sit around waiting for it to arrive on our doorstep. However, true meaning and beauty is found when we take a moment to step off the treadmill of life and appreciate the small and simple things. In this moment, I am grateful for the lesson I learned from the stillness of a pond.