Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.
Dillard cuts against the grain of beauty-seeking: she's not urging you to *create* or *find* beauty, but simply to show up for it—a posture of availability rather than ambition. The radical move here is suggesting that grace exists independent of our recognition, which should humble us rather than paralyze us. When you sit through a mediocre concert but stay present anyway, or watch a sunset you've seen a hundred times, you're practicing the discipline she means: not waiting for perfection to justify your attention.
“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason...”
Marcus Aurelius“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. I...”
Viktor Frankl“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
Seneca