The other morning I had many errands to run. Luckily everything I needed to do could be done in our neighbourhood giving me the opportunity to take a nice long walk.

Since painting my bedroom walls, I have a new mission—that of focusing on the beauty that’s out there just waiting to be noticed. And I ask myself if it’s possible that someone can rewire their brain by simply ignoring what’s ugly and mentally surrounding the self with beauty?

On a street intersecting with Corso Trieste, there’s a building covered with naked windows save for one dressed in fuchsia cyclamens. Initially, I simply walked past the flowers thinking how pretty they were. Then, BOOM! George Santayana’s ghost jumped out in front of me and said: “Where are you going? I thought you wanted to experience everyday beauty.” So I quickly turned around and returned to the cyclamens. Then, standing in front of them, I began to observe the flowers as if they were a painting in a museum.

The cyclamen was one of Leonardo da Vinci’s favorite flowers and he used to draw them in the margins of his books. Dormant during the summer, the cyclamen wakes up during the autumn, dances its way through the winter then, exhausted, returns to its seasonal hibernation.

Epilogue: Don’t ignore beauty or it will ignore you.

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