What you look at, what you see

It cannot be avoided.

In order to get from my home to the big city just south of it, it is necessary to travers a road with oil refineries on one side and a gravel pit on the other. At one point, it is necessary to pass some grungy old bars, one of which advertises -- let's just say -- dancing girls.

This drive is an affront to my senses. My sense of environment, my sense of aesthetics, my sense of beauty, my sense of morality, my sense of propriety, my sense of men needing to respect women and my sense of women not allowing themselves to be used by men.

There is only one way to get through it each time. That is to look ahead to the distant mountains.

The Wasatch range goes north and south for miles. Often snowcapped, it is majestic and imposing. As your eyes go along its ridges and valleys, they reach the sky, also inspiring. You know there are beautiful places, beautiful things, clean air and untouched wilderness. Purity.

Permit me to draw a larger picture.

Going through life often brings you close to pollutions of various sorts. Things that somehow seem wrong. Or sad. That perspective can bring you down unless you look ahead to the bigger picture, find the natural, the clean, the innocent. Direct your eyes upward to the mountains, to the sky. There is beauty and good. And it is there for us whenever we turn our eyes to it.