It’s kind of a fun game. “Find Waldo.”  Or, “Find the Pig in the Clouds.” And—once you find it, you typically find it immediately the next time. 

Here’s a variant that I like: “Find the Beauty.” 

The idea is simple. You go to an art gallery or a museum and it’s fairly easy to find the beauty. No big surprise there. 

Go into a natural setting and you’re often absolutely surrounded by beauty at many different levels of scale. 

Go to see a world-famous architectural achievement, and you will see beauty. 

But—you know what? There’s also beauty to be found in many ordinary and every day places and circumstances. Since you can’t always control where you are, it’s a good skill to find that beauty wherever you are. 

Today, Wendy and I took Sadie and Bailey out to one of our favorite dog-friendly restaurants. We had a very long wait. None of the four of us is high on the scale of patience. When we finally sat down, however, the dogs were very well-behaved. 

While we waited for our food to arrive, I looked around for Waldo.

He wasn’t there. In fact, no-one even had a checkered shirt on. 

So, instead, I looked around for beauty. 

As usual, I found it, at least to my eye. 

Give it a shot. You’d be surprised where you can find beauty. 

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Fit in Bits suggests many ways to work more fun, variety, and exercise into daily chores. 

Corn on the Cob is an essay on mindfulness and gratitude for simple things.

Fifteen Properties begins a series of posts about the fifteen properties that architect Christopher Alexander said characterized both natural beauty and good design. 

Maybe it Needs a New Starter is a poem about the beauty that might be found even in malfunction.

Levels of Beauty is a short picture essay about how you may find beauty at different levels.

Not Long the Daze is a short poem about finding beauty.

The Jewels of November is a longer poem about how sometimes simple beauty can be obscured by flash and dazzle.

Galactic Best is a short poem about the most wonderful planet we know of.

Kinda Crazy is a short poem about how one might perceive the world.

The Puppy’s Snapping Jaws is a short poem about a beautiful sound.

First Things First is a short poem about priorities.

What Line? Is a short poem about an important decision.