This state of amazement, once again, lies always just below the surface of our quotidian consciousness; but beauty stirs us from our habitual forgetfulness of the wonder of being.

We train our focus on beauty here or there—this poem, that architecture—because it is easier than bearing witness to our own story. We begin to gravitate not toward beauty but toward illusion. In this state, you are not approaching what you seek. You are running from your own face. But this is not the way of wonder. Wonder requires a person not to

In life we eradicate much to see beauty.

As we pay respectful gratitude for the jewels of beauty strewn throughout a day, pleasure begins to reach and flow through us. We become more generous of spirit. Not simply in the sense of giving things away to others, but as a demeanour. Like an open door to the divine, pleasure is an invitation to joy, that it may live more fully in our lives.