How do we determine beauty? What is it about things that appeal to us? And why do some people find things beautiful but others do not?
I have been walking a fair bit recently and I have seen many beautiful things on my walks. It could be the frost on the lawn as it glistens in the early morning light, or a lingering blossom on a tree branch as the rest of it buds with new green life. Also the community spirit of locals sharing footpaths as we make our way through this changed landscape that is 2020.
I often point out things I see that I find beautiful and I see in my kids’ faces a bemused expression, like I’m weird to think that is a thing of beauty. It’s made me wonder what determines, in our minds, things of beauty vs. ordinary. Is there such a thing as ordinary or can beauty be found everywhere.
I think the real secret to beauty is the contrast of nature. In order to appreciate something as being truly lovely, we need to also appreciate the ugly parts of life.
Ugliness comes in many forms. It can be a person’s reaction to something that can be deemed ugly; A judgmental stare or a nasty comment. It could be the “gateway of poo” in our front garden at the moment where neighbours have failed to collect the steaming piles of excrement left by their much loved pooches and skulked stealthily away leaving behind what we affectionately call the “gateway of poo”. Careful, I say, as we step between the carefully laid and now decomposing piles. It could be a slug, caterpillar or worm that people find offensive. My daughter can’t handle things that bunch and slither to move. She finds these critters repulsive. Maybe that is ugliness. Many people find these creatures delightful and interesting.
For me it’s not “things” I find ugly but the actions taken by people. I am fully aware of the ugliness of actions I have taken in my journey through life. I try to live with no regrets but I remember every careless statement I have made and every action that has in some way hurt another. Sometimes it was intentional. That in built feeling of achieving justice for a perceived sleight against me or someone I love. That mental justification that my behaviour is somehow less ugly than what was inflicted on me. That ugliness inside us that comes out when we feel like someone has received something that you don’t think they deserve and conversely when something bad happened to them we say “oh well they got what they deserve”. Like we are the deciders of justice in this world. Like we are the barometer of good and bad, deserving and non-deserving, ugly and beautiful.
So if my kids can’t see the beauty in the things surrounding us, like I do, is that because they haven’t yet witnessed the ugliness of life? In order to fully appreciate the beautiful moments it is important to also open our eyes up to the ugliness. And to me the true ugliness lies within human nature.
Hypocrisy seems to be a word that surrounds me a lot recently. We feel this need to be perfect all the time and if we slip up, we are a hypocrite. If we tell our kids not to swear but we use swear words in our interactions with them does that make us hypocritical or just normal? If we take our re-useable bags to the shops and buy produce wrapped in single use plastic and products packaged in plastic then smugly load them into our re-usable bags, does that makes us a hypocrite? If we comfortably say nasty things about someone to a friend, under the cone of friend’s silence, but then react strongly when we hear nastiness said about us, is that hypocritical behaviour? My answer is yes. We are all guilty of believing we are doing the ‘right’ thing and sitting in silent judgement of those not making the same choices as us, quietly patting ourselves on the back for being so ‘good’ and so ‘righteous’. Is it because we feel like we made some kind of sacrifice in our actions? I think maybe so. If we think we have sacrificed something, by choice, we want everyone else to do the same. It makes us feel more comfortable with our choices.
Ultimately that’s what it comes down to. Choices.
We are presented with choices in every moment of our lives. Some seem obvious; putting sugar in coffee or leaving it out, brushing our teeth before we leave the house, cleaning the kitchen before we go to bed or leaving it until morning. Some of these choices are easy and come down to conditioning over time. Of course we brush our teeth before we leave the house or else we would feel gross all day and have stinky breath. We have also conditioned ourselves to do this over many years and it’s become a habit. Maybe the ugly behaviour has also become a habit. Maybe that need to judge others and their choices started at an early age when we judged those kids in school who didn’t conform, or wore their hair differently or scraped the plaque off their teeth with the end of their pencil in class. Maybe our parents pointed out other “badly behaving” children and showed us how “not to behave” and instilled in us a need to compare ourselves to others to find worth in our own actions.
We are going through challenging times at the moment, well for some people anyway, others may not be challenged by current events. These are times that have brought to the forefront our basic human nature. It is showing us the ugliness that lives inside us and what might drive us to make the choices we make. It has shown us some unpleasant truths about our friends and acquaintances but it has also shown a beauty of spirit in our children who have taken on so much this year and stayed so positive. Some people choose to close themselves off from this ugliness of life because it makes them feel uncomfortable, but I choose authentic because in order to truly appreciate the beauty surrounding us we must also look into the face of ugliness and find the beauty in there too.
After all those caterpillars will eventually turn into butterflies.
