Gazing Up Stairwells

When you go to new places, looking across vistas or up a staircase as it wraps around higher and higher, what do you see and think? Is there a sense of beauty or architecture for you? Or don't you look close enough to really see it – is it simply a means to an end, a passage to a goal? Or worse, do you dislike it, feel sick with envy, vertigo, or a lack of interest?

I have been watching a documentary on the cathedrals of England. These amazing structures take your breath away with their size, the beauty of the craftsmanship, and the knowledge that they were built in a time when there were no power tools or cranes and so forth. Like castles and palaces, some took decades to build and sometimes the building process outlived the owner, designer, and/or architect.

How do you see things? Take a beautiful old church; do you look around and absorb the beauty of the carvings, arches, buttresses, choir lofts? Do you sense the presence of history and/or holiness? Or have you been in the church so many times, perhaps walked through it all your life, and you just walk past the beautiful stained-glass windows? Do you forget to look up at the beauty of the ceiling – because don’t most old churches have amazing ceilings? Do you no longer see it?

If you have never been a churchgoer, think of another building that once caught your breath when you first saw it. Say a government building or a big, old Victorian home on a house tour. Carved doors and window frames, sweeping stairways, decorative ceilings, fireplaces, plate rails, and on and on. Whether wood or marble, the craftsmanship of the earlier centuries is astounding. The hours it took to create and build these places without modern electric tools really is mind-bending.

Whether it is a capitol building or a church that you’ve seen time and time again – or even your own home or workplace – that allows you to relate to this blog, ask yourself if you have found that when you walk in the doors now does your breath no longer inhale at the beauty or extraordinariness? Instead, do you go to your regular pew, bench, or chair and lay your hand on the beautiful post, side or back support to sit, but don’t see it anymore because your mind is on sitting down and readying yourself for what will shortly be taking place?

I believe one of the ways we keep young at heart and happy is by not letting things get too stale. Sometimes our mind may not be on the surroundings around us because circumstances are forefront, but sometimes we should go back to the days when a place or item or discovery or movie or person made us incredibly happy or startled or amazed or at peace and try and see it as we did the first time. Magical. Amazing. Necessary. Take in whatever beauty you can find – inside, outside, all around us. Whether it's a magnificent cathedral, a glob of something under a microscope, or a pair of your favorite earrings, let it seep into your soul – and live there. There's nothing like the sense of wonder retained in soul.