The Beauty of Existence is in the gazing

Families are strolling in the park. It is sunny and there is a cold breeze in the air. Kids are running out, puppies barking and cats chasing each other. The sun's rays are peaking through the thick green shrubbery of the trees. A man walks into the park and squints his eyes at the sun. “Too sunny”, he musters as he starts doing his stretches and strolling down the walker’s track. He is caring enough to give the fast joggers the right of way and to let kids stray across his path without grumbling about it. Even on such a beautiful day, the man can find nothing to be grateful for, nothing to appreciate. He sneers angrily at the birds chirping in the trees as if his sneering would make them shut up. The birds kept on chirping, blissfully unaware of the man strolling beneath. After he had stretched and strolled for a good 5 minutes, the man stopped in a corner, stooped down and tightened his laces. It was time. He stretched his neck for the last time, in a bit of a reptilian fashion, in a clockwise manner and started jogging at a leisurely pace. He monitored his breathing, trying to control it instead of letting his breathing control him. He increased his pace slowly and steadily while trying to focus on his surroundings. Along with that, he was trying to remain in touch with his body as well. He had noticed that for the longest times, he would suppress various bodily sensations by either calling them weird, uncalled for or just gas lighting himself into believing that they were all in his head. Strangely reminiscent of his childhood, his parents had done very similar things to themselves and to him. He kept on increasing his pace, loving the speed and the wind whipping his face. He had a custom of touching plants or trees in his way kind of as if he was calling out checkpoint in an elaborate race. 

Sweat beads on his forehead and starts dripping down his face, he decides to slow down, while pulling his cellphone out of his zippered pocket. The though popped in his head that it might seem awkward, a 26 year old male stumbling, while jogging, trying to undo his zippered pocket. He quickly shook that though out of his head and focused on the task at hand. Once the cellphone was successfully retrieved from his pocket, he checked his messages, a very damaging habit he had picked up, and then switched the song. He slowed down to a leisurely jog again trying to take in the beauty around him. The sweat, the increased blood flow and his heart thumping all worked in to make him see everything he was missing out on. A quote popped in to his head from “when Nietzsche Wept”, a book by Irvin Yalom, how many times he wondered he had looked without seeing.