Does Beauty Really Matter?

And a prompt

Dear Delightful Pals,

This Thursday’s pop-up salon (12 - 1 pm PDT) will return to its orgins and spin the conversation around BEAUTY. Specifically:

Does beauty really matter? And what about during terrible times?

Here’s my Beauty Hunter take on the question, and I invite you to have yours, always. Also: a prompt for you to take into the week, at the very end.

The omniscient, unconditional quality of beauty

“Beauty”, however you experience or define* it, doesn’t care what you think of it. Beauty isn’t considerable only when in some kind of state of grace, a good mood, or feeling “grateful.”

*My current definition of beauty is:
That which exalts the senses and expands the mind and spirit.

Beauty—whatever it is that makes life worth living—the moon! the stars! galaxies exploding! a child laughing, an earthworm crawling through damp spring soil, ferns unfurling, your demented father’s smile as he nears death, a barista’s kind greeting after the doctor appointment, a flower blooming in the battlefield—this is beauty’s omniscience, persistence and unconditional-ness.

(I love the m-dash, the beautiful space where you can tuck in so many goodies, like a little candy pouch in a sentence.)

Life gets challenging. You might say FUCK YOU, beauty of life; you might be in such pain, that believing in a world that contains any spec of beauty is complete bullshit. I get it. Stay right where you are because that’s perfect too. But life is impersonal, and doesn’t care what we think; beauty/life/the world doesn’t care how you feel about it. It’s going to power on.

Beauty is there when you’re ready to connect, even if it’s a quick momentary flicker of “pretty flower” as you hobble down the street, and return to the suffer-suffer. That’s beauty popping in to give you a few seconds of relief. That’s beauty helping you build capacity, capacity to be with Everything.

Sometimes we forget that in the modern big-bold lively scary confronting world we have an enormous capacity for life and living. We are naturally adaptive creatures. We don’t have to be afraid of our thoughts or experiences. We don’t have to like them. We don’t have to believe them. But sometimes it all feels too much. Yes, plenty of days I want to hide under the bedcovers, and never come out

So I turn toward beauty. I make it a spiritual partner. I look for beauty in the tragic, the dark, the ugly. Like a witnessing, presence in motion. Artists—musicians, writers, painters—do this for us, show us this all the time.

My Beauty Hunter exploration continues to reveal why beauty matters, and that it’s a portal to a higher level of understanding and awakening. My wish is that seeing beauty in daily life does the same for you, for all of us, even if it’s just the tiniest little sliver of hope. Watch it grow.

PROMPT: Consider the un-beautiful beautiful

Experiment with seeing the beauty/OK-ness/value in something that is ordinarily “un-beautiful” to you. I got this idea from the wise creative and feisty Nicola Bird, who shared her fascination with “dark and beautiful.” Immediately I started looking for dark & beautiful. It began here, with a vase of fresh cut tulips.

In the beginning, pristine & photo-ready. Ta-da!

At about this falling-apart stage I usually compost them. Not this time.

Almost comical — but also interesting, textured, so much going on!

Usually, I have this thing about dead cut flowers. BAD JUJU! Get rid of ‘em! This time around, I considered their dark beauty and watched the petals flop open, rip, fall, until there was nothing but stems.

I loved ALL OF IT. Now, my capacity for enjoying flowers grew by about three days.

OK, you go. Tell me about seeing beauty in unusual places.

I love you. Thank you.

Don’t forget to sign up for the pop-up Beauty Salon, you can register here. XO