I’ve been reading Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. It is a beautiful book. Ms. Gilbert has a way of spinning words so that I feel I am there with her in Italy, or India, or Bali. When I close the book and my eyes refocus on my surroundings I am a little disappointed. There are no tropical flowers here, nor many singing birds. This is Utah in early March. All I have is tufts of green poking out of the ground, a mere promise of flowers to come. And then I get in my car and drive down paved roads on any one of a dozen mundane errands. It is all so prosaic and unlovely. Nothing like walking in India or riding a bicycle down Balinese roads. But then I stop and think again. Eat Pray Love is not meant to inspire dissatisfaction, quite the opposite. It is about finding peace and joy and beauty. Ms. Gilbert had the glorious opportunity to live for a year in foreign places. I am not likely to have that opportunity in my life. I am likely to spend most of my life in automobile-centered America. This does not mean that my life lacks beauty or poetry. To many people the world over American life is very attractive. I think happiness lies in finding the beauty that is around me all the time. Ms. Gilbert found women splitting rocks in India to be beautiful. I can find beauty in the amazing dance of pedals, levers, and wheels to operate an automobile. I can look at the concrete expanse of the cul de sac and consider it a wasteland, or I can remember the endless games that my children have played with the other neighborhood kids across that gloriously smooth expanse. I can lament my lack of flowers, or I can watch the spring bulbs grow and find beauty in the cycle of dormancy and renewal. I just need to look around me and see my life with eyes that are looking for beauty, rather than eyes who seek source for complaint.