in praise of appreciation

I’m enjoying my art appreciation class. It’s my third one. I take it with others over age 50 who, like me, have joined the Lifetime Learners Institute, a program offered to our cohort by our local community college. It’s staffed by volunteers. Classes are offered in a wide range of areas from art appreciation to military history to short story reading, as well as classes on current events, Asian brush painting and the Beat poets. A minimal registration and individual course fee supports the program which is there just for the love of learning. No grades. No competition. No requirements or expectations. Just an environment perfectly suited to simply appreciating.

The pace of spring’s arrival suits the art of appreciation as cold weather gives way to warmer days. Great mounds of snow melt away returning missing parking spaces to the grocery story lot. Budding leaves in the undergrowth fill in the empty spaces of the woods behind the middle school. Pink trees bloom all over the neighborhood giving me time to remember the difference between crabapples, redbuds, dogwoods, magnolias and weeping cherry trees just to name a few. There’s always one or two oddly warm days where everyone is suddenly outdoors, mulching a garden bed, washing a car in the driveway or having a walk and a sit at the beach before we return to spring temps; just enough to tease out thoughts of summer.

Spending the weekend with people you love where one person did the long drive, another paid for dinner, another made a favorite dish, and another brought the perfect game to play to make everyone laugh and enjoy each other’s company. You appreciate the gifts of uniqueness, friendship, connection and notice the passage of time. You appreciate the beautiful scenery of a different place, the sounds, smells and pathways of a new neighborhood.

Even something as simple as a short in-person chat with the neighbor across the way, or a phone call or an email from and old friend can expose the benefits of appreciation – it’s connection; it’s awareness; it’s dropping the me perspective in favor of the you out there perspective.

Treat yourself to appreciation. Quite literally, stop and smell the hyacinths. Really look at a statue in the park or a rainbow on the wall. Take the time to discern all the different tastes in the food you eat. Listen to the music you like – all the instruments, all the notes, all the words. Watch a two-year-old dance. Breathe in, follow your breath, breathe out and follow it again. Marvel at how you do that all the time without even noticing, even while sleeping!, and how that keeps you alive – to complain or kvetch or worry – or to enjoy and appreciate all that there is around for you to love, to notice, to attend to in new, engaged ways.

© 2026 www.megreilly360.com

4/20/2026