"Why do you get up in the morning?"

I was caught short by this question as I complained to a friend about my seeming inability to overcome my shortcomings and bad habits, notably my difficulty in getting out of bed when the alarm goes off in the morning. After recovering from the shock at the interruption to my familiar litany of self-criticisms, answers began to pour into my mind.

"Well, there's my responsibilities," I began hesitantly, "the people that depend on me, the tasks that need to get done—"

"Nonsense!" he retorted.

I felt like I was an adept before a fierce, stick-wielding Master, attempting the correct answer to a Zen koan. But lo, this was a friend I was speaking to—a real friend—and so I looked again.

"Beauty...Grace...Connection. In my heart of hearts, these are the things I get up for."

The conversation had derailed my habitual self-pitying train of thought—those concerns that are like the ball of shit that occupies the dung beetle. My friend's question unexpectedly put me in front of those things I truly value.

He wasn't about to relent.

"What is beauty?" he continued.

"It is in everything, in varying degrees," I responded. "Wherever I look for it, it is there. If I'm not looking for it, beauty eludes me."

"Quit philosophizing. What is it?"

"Beauty is a thing's true nature, revealed."

"Good...And how do you perceive it?"

"When I am open and relaxed I see that it is always there."

"What gets in the way?"

"When I have an agenda; when I want a situation to produce a particular result; when I am dissatisfied, I miss the beauty that is expressed through the person, thing, or situation that is before me."

"How do you function when you experience beauty?"

"I am able to respond to it in a way that feels efficient and appropriate—like real service. I become graceful."

"And how do you characterize the experience?"

"It is a connection. It really feels as though the beauty I am perceiving outside myself is connecting to a beauty inside myself—that there is no difference. It awakens and enlivens my whole being."

"So the three things you get up for are actually one thing."

"Yes."

"And what do you feel in the moments when you experience beauty, grace, and connection?"

"I feel Love."

"So what you are talking about is a means to becoming a channel for love."

"Yes."

This conversation revealed many things. Not only did it show what is truly important to me, but it also showed me a means of attaining it—that is to look for beauty; to connect to that beauty and feel its essential rightness; and to gracefully respond to the beauty I perceive. Perceiving beauty is easy to do in moments like this, as I sit in my home on the side of a mountain, at sunset. Across the valley Overlook Mountain is covered in mottled sunlight with clouds above flying across a pink and orange sky. The clouds are pushed by a fierce wind that whistles, and the trees outside my window bow and bend before it. Perceiving beauty is harder when I am confronted with a problem, an angry person, examples of injustice, or images of destruction and suffering in the world. But the task doesn't change in either case. There is beauty in both the "beautiful" and the terrible.

Of course, what is truly important is different for each person, and it is up to each of us to discover and formulate what it truly is that we get up for in the morning.

—Jason Stern