Up and Away

I was walking past a small neighborhood baseball field when I noticed it was ringed by ten or so beautiful, blooming cherry trees. I stopped and sat with the dogs a few minutes, just to take in the color, the scent, and the solitude. The cherry blossoms return every year of course, but with such brevity, I try to thoroughly enjoy those times I venture by when they are in full bloom. As I soaked up their subtle movements in the soft wind, I began to look around noticing others in the area going about their day. Nearby, a man walked his dog on the far corner, a young boy raced by with a noisy muffler in a mustang, a quick-paced mother carried a bag of groceries pulling her son in tow. No one, I mean, absolutely none of them, paused to look toward the beauty that was so close. It was hard to reconcile. Why? I think somewhere along the line, our culture suffered a deep shift in how it viewed the world around it, becoming more obsessed with getting somewhere over actually BEING somewhere.