As I drove the state of Texas these past few days it gave me time to reflect. I’m leaving Texas to seek the beauty of the mountains. But Texas is beautiful too.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This is a statement we’ve all heard many times but as I get older I find it applies to everything.

While Texas may not have mountains so big they make you feel small, Texas is so big it makes you feel small! Driving for 8 hours across the state and not even stretching from border to border makes me feel like a small speck in this wonderfully, big world. And that is beautiful to me.

While we can all respect the beauty and grandeur of mountains, something a lot of Americans probably haven’t experienced is the beauty of a West Texas sunset. The sky and clouds literally marble around the arch of the sun setting into the level distance. Watching the sunset on my drive from Houston to Dallas eased my mind in a way a massage or meditation never could.

But I know others would probably gawk at staring at the sun (bunch of Type As…) or prefer to view the sunset overlooking a lake or cliff face. It was that realization, the preference for different things because different things are beautiful to different people, that lead my train of thought back to the original interpretation of “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

It reminded me of an old video I watched about Beauty Standards Around the World. As I re-watched this video that so well showcased the expectations for beauty from different cultures’ perspectives it made me wonder how Americans could possibly have one expectation for what beauty is. In a country so big, and full of so many diverse people, beauty can never be defined. Such that saying the mountains are the most beautiful landscape of America is as wrong as saying only one hair/eye color is the most beautiful American.

New Mexico bound today!