I went for a walk today. It wasn't really the perfect, sunny, walking day. The trees were bent over so far from the wind they seemed mere inches away from snapping in two, the puddles were well over my ankles. I ignored the voice in my head that was calling me crazy and walked slowly down the street until I found the ditch-like path leading to the trail behind my house. At the bottom of the path was a huge puddle, the water at least five inches deep. I sighed and considered going back. Instead I tried to balance on the edges of it, I was doing pretty good until the last step. My foot went right to the bottom and water sloshed up over my little pink flats. A very colorful stream of words flowed from my mouth, catching the attention of the neighbor smoking a cigarette in the house next to me. I forced a fake smile and continued walking.
My first thought was 'what ugly weather'. With the gravel under my feet saturated from the rain and the ponds on the verge of overflowing, I could see absolutely no beauty in any of this mess. The grass that usually shot up past my knees was now matted in hideous clumps around the trail. No matter how hard I tried, I saw nothing but the disgusting weather around me.
Until I saw the duck. It was bobbing along in the bloated pond, seeming to be happy as a lark. The weather hadn't affected him at all. It's black feathers were dripping and ruffled but when he caught sight of me his bill opened slightly, as though laughing at the stupid human that had ventured out into the storm. I felt a real, genuine, smile spread across my face and I felt myself laughing with the duck. After that it was easy. Everything seemed to hold a new meaning. The trees were suddenly dancing to music only they could hear, not bending over in pain from the wind. Even the ponds that had overflowed onto the trail and were threatening to meet in the middle made the classic Romeo and Juliet scene of two things kept always apart and only meeting when they have the chance.
A thought crossed my mind. Maybe life isn't about seeing the beautiful as beautiful and the ugly as ugly. Maybe what we are supposed to do is see something ugly and find the beauty in it. How much have we missed because we have taken something- or someone- and seen only the ugliness in it? The problem is that it's easier to see the flaws and complications in everything. It takes one glance to judge something as ugly, it takes many second-glances to see it was beautiful. To see the ugly as beautiful you really have to get on your hands and knees and dig until you're covered in mud and even then you have to keep digging but when you find it, you'll know it and suddenly being covered in mud won't matter. All that will matter is that you found it. You found the beauty in the ugly.