Some of the most breathtaking sights one can
see are framed in the sky, behemoths that float effortlessly and pass
fleetingly. They come in different shapes and varieties and colors. For the
low, low cost of nothing at all, you too can witness the beautiful sight of
clouds.
Beauty, or rather beautiful things, is often
associated with humans, most notably women. But beautiful things exist beyond
just humans and don’t require makeup or plastic surgery. I find that simply
looking up at the clouds is the simplest, yet most rewarding experience.
After a tiring day or before going to school,
anytime at all really, one can relax by watching the clouds for just a minute. You
can look for patterns or even turn around and watch another patch of a
boundless sky. Even better, one can come back to the same cloud watching spot
an hour later on a windy day and find different clouds.
One day, when I was walking home on a lonely street of
smog and vehicles, I decided, out of the blue, to look up and I found myself staring
at the sky. I was awestruck by the intensity of red in the clouds that converged
on a single point, the eye of the storm where the sun shone with all its brilliance
in the most beautiful sunset I had ever seen. Drivers passing by saw a boy
looking west, his mouth slightly open and he seemed to shiver as he stood, not
from the cold but from witnessing something so magnificent.
As sudden as the awe had come, it passed and thoughts of
being late again for dinner crept back into my mind. I took one last long look
before staring at the sidewalk again, letting my feet guide me to home. A
cyclist passed by me and she called out to me, a stranger, “Look up, dude!” It
was as if the clouds had beckoned me back and the sunset wanted me to watch it,
for just a minute longer. She told me a joke before she rode off into the
sunset and I didn’t feel quite as alone anymore.
To this day, I still watch clouds to find a sunset
rivaling the one I had seen that day. I found magnificence and beauty in a
sunset that was easy to find. All I had to do was look up.