Once upon a time I was a little boy on a road trip across West Texas with my family. We were headed probably to California or Wyoming or New Mexico. We were a traveling family; always off to some cool place. My folks would have made great pioneers; unafraid to pack up the kids (there were six), an erroneous grandparent and the dog and head out west. On this particular leg of the trip, I was sitting in the seat behind my father who was at the wheel of our family’s station wagon. West Texas can be quite desolate. “Pretty” is not a word that you would use to describe it. Vast sections of West Texas are flat offering, over massive stretches of distance, no discernable changes in the landscape. As a child in the back seat of our car, already a day and a half into the journey, West Texas challenged me. In that moment, it seemed to be endless and grim. There was nothing to look at, it seemed. Nothing. I was from Houston you see, so I looking for drama. I wanted craggy peaks and cacti the size of skyscrapers, tumbleweeds, ghost towns. Then breaking the silence and the monotony of the landscape, my father spoke five short words; “There is beauty in everything.” It was one of those moments. And though I was one of many in the car that day, his words were intended for my ears I am certain. His words were truth. His words changed my life. A perfectly synchronized moment. Me, lost in the landscape and in my observation of what seemed to be so bleak; my father, in his own moment, the same landscape – a different experience and his wisdom to speak of it. “There is beauty in everything.” His words fell inside of me instantly changing the way I saw and experienced that moment. Transformation in an instant. Any moment can be the moment.

Right before my eyes what was once only a monotonous and barren land became indisputably gorgeous. I had new eyes. My vision expanded and deepened and not for this landscape alone. In that instance, the way I saw everything changed. From that moment forward, life became an exploration of beauty. I began to discover beauty in the ugliest of places, to seek it out in everything; every landscape, every conversation, every person, every experience, every moment. You find what you look for.

That day in the car sitting behind my father, was a perfect moment. My father’s five words were an arrow that went deep into my young psyche. I was the perfect age to take it in without struggle or question. In fact it might have been the hypnotizing monotony of the very landscape I was watching that allowed that arrow to land so gracefully within me. Perhaps the land itself was conspiring to awaken me. I like to think so. Today, on this day, I am grateful for that conspiring landscape, for those five words and the truth they held, for my father, for my young, open heart and for the immediate and permanent change that took place that day in West Texas 35 years ago. I have built a life on those five words and it’s is a life that no matter what, always sees beauty. For this I am indisputably grateful.

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