I am back at my laptop after a brief hiatus…I just could not figure out what to write! And as I know that is just natural, I did not stress out much:) I have also slacked a bit in my ‘a photo, a day’ thing and that has been bothering a bit. To be honest, I was and am finding it a bit difficult to take photos of moments around me probably because I am still kind of new at this and also because I keep forgetting to keep my camera handy 😦 Anyways, I geared up and clicked some photos over the past few days and here they are. These are pictures of not moments but of patterns that we see in things around us. I have always been fascinated by the symmetry of things that we see in mundane everyday items around us and also in the natural world out there, in particular the beauty of bare branches around winter time (they are mesmerizing!). So, I started looking around the house and noticed how so many simple things, when looked at closely can be beautiful in their own way (to me, at least).

   These were not shot in the black and white mode, the top three pictures happened to be just like that. The first one is that of a candle holder that hangs on one of the walls in our bedroom, the next one is the cover of a crossword book I once tried solving while the third one is that of a plastic toy bowl. They are part of our everyday life,  simple and sort of trivial and yet they are admirable in their own way. The elephant is one of my favorite pieces in the house…it was bought years ago from one of my favorite stores, Home Goods and though it is not made of wood or any fancy material, the craftsmanship is beautiful! The final picture is that of an outdoor coffee table top outside of my son’s playschool, where i usually sit and have my breakfast and read a book for a couple of hours, a couple of times a week. I have been sitting there for many days now, but the pattern never struck me. And then last week, it just jumped at me as I was trying to figure out how to be better at capturing moments or things that spoke to me:)

   Everyday items can be, and are, cute and wonderful. We just need to look. These are my son’s play items which I often find scattered all around the house, at times in places where they have no business of being! I hardly stop to look at them (except for his miniature cars which are on a whole other level of being gorgeous…I am a huge fan of miniature things with intricate details on them…who is not?!) but I am glad that this one time I stopped to look. They are colorful and have symmetry and are charming. There is beauty all around us- they might not be in the most obvious places and might not be so in the most conventional sense -but nonetheless they are. It is up to us to look at things in a different way and make the most out of what we have.

   In the world that we live in today, one that seems to be getting more and more fragmented, with hatred spewing out so easily that it is scary, we have to be more conscious of the way we look at things, the way we choose to think and act, the way we feel, the way we empathize with those around us, the way we go on about our daily lives.  It is easy to lose hope amidst all the negativity and disdain but moments of happiness are also in plenty. There are people who are speaking out and fighting for those who have been wronged, the younger generation is rallying around and taking action to change laws and systems that are detrimental to the well being of our society, and community members are coming together to protect the weak and voiceless. It might seem like a drop in the ocean but it is happening and that gives everyone hope. We can all do our part by raising our voices and doing our part in our own way since being silent is being complicit in the injustice. And, in times of hopelessness or dejection, we can find a bit of comfort in frozen frames that remind us of happy times and of a world where there is beauty and love.