An Interesting Perspective....

"It is the Joshua Tree's struggle that gives it its beauty"

I have been reading a book my sister lent me and came across this interesting passage from within it. The young girl was speaking to her mother about how she wished she could transplant the young Joshua Tree closer to her home so she could nurture it and protect it from the wind so it could grow up nice and tall and straight and the mother replied to her daughter "You'd be destroying what makes it special, it's the Joshua Tree's struggle that gives it its beauty."

What an interesting perspective. I hadn't really thought of beauty within struggles. Sure I have thought about life's lessons, learning opportunities, gaining strength and insight within places of struggle....but never beauty.

How amazing it would be to find beauty within struggles....would it not alter our entire perspective on the struggles in our life if we could find beauty within them?

Life's struggles are looked at far too often in negative ways and we do everything we can to try and eliminate them. The self-help books, the ways to "escape", the gadgets and gizmos designed to make life easier, the medications and specialists......and the list goes on and on. Sure there is some merit in many of these tools, but merit can also be found in facing struggles...by putting on your "finest pair of rubber boots" and sometimes your "finest hip waders" to wade through the muck of life's journey. To face struggles, to face adversity and challenges, to have days where life is hard and putting one foot in front of the other takes everything in you.....somewhere within that there lies beauty and opportunity.

It has been said many times before by people who have taken the time to reflect, to look back upon their life, often because they are in a place of facing some of their greatest struggles ~

"when I look back upon my life the moments where I was truly living were the moments when I faced the greatest amount of struggles and adversity."

Again I say, an interesting perspective and one I find a great deal of merit within when I look back upon my own life. It is facing and often overcoming life's struggles where our true self shines through, where we learn the most, where we have to put more energy into living....not through the times when we are "coasting" through life, letting the moments pass by in a blur of contentment.

Contentment...."a feeling of quiet happiness and satisfaction". To me, that sounds so much like the end....you have reached a destination. And is there a destination in life.....or is it an ever evolving journey? I myself, tend to think of life as an ever evolving journey, much like the Joshua Tree filled with twists and turns......and beauty.