Seeking Beauty
We hear a lot about gratitude practices these days, but the practice of seeking beauty is just as important!
Overt beauty is easy to appreciate - a magnificent landscape, a gorgeous face, a breath-taking sunset - we’re emotionally moved and sometimes stunned into silence by sublime beauty. Simple beauty, however, is a little more hidden, but can still be found in the mundane; learning to notice, appreciate, and even seek out simple beauty is a skill that can make life itself feel rich and meaningful - especially when we’re experiencing bleakness, turmoil, and chaos.
I’m leaning hard on this practice myself, these days. In the midst of a cross-country move with no set-in-stone destination while selling a house that’s turning out to have significant issues, the stress is incredibly high. Life feels chaotic - there’s a ton of uncertainty about how the next few months will unfold and doubt about the decisions I’ve made and am making. The big picture feels scary right now and I can feel my body reacting with a near-constant state of fight-or-flight - my body is tense all the time, my digestion has shifted for the worse, and I find myself more irritable and emotional than usual.
Our first stop on this journey has been a week in the badlands of North Dakota, a region I’ve driven through on road trips, but never spent much time in. I didn’t have any particular desire to be here, but it’s a midway point in this move to the east coast and seemed like a good place to rest, regroup, and figure out the next stages of the journey.
I’m deeply influenced by landscape and nature, and what I remember of the badlands was a lot of flat land, few trees, very open sky, lots of wind - as someone who resonates with ocean and forest, it’s not the kind of landscape that usually speaks to me! I expected to feel bored and stuck in the middle of nowhere, and planned to make the best of it by working on my website and catching up on movies I’ve wanted to see.
To my surprise, I’ve found myself immersed in so many moments of beauty: the mood of the landscape changing drastically with the weather; watching buffalo, pheasants, antelope, a bald eagles just hanging out on the side of the road; the unexpected spark of human connection with friendly people we encounter; the amazing scent of the earth after a heavy storm. What seemed like a dull landscape while driving through to another destination is becoming truly beautiful and deeply calming as I linger and soak in the surreal openness of the rolling hills.
Seeking beauty as a life-practice doesn’t change anything externally - I’m still experiencing stress, uncertainty, doubt, and fear - but it awakens us to a richer experience of living, inviting us to be fully in the present moment with the beauty of life. Seeking beauty allows us to reframe our inner experiences and find balance and meaning during the tough times. As a consistent practice, seeking beauty rewires our expectations and perceptions, helping us “bounce back” more effortlessly when we’re inevitably faced with challenges and dark times.
This week, I encourage you to seek beauty in the small things: the repetitive moments of life, the experience you have on your yoga mat, the aspects of your surroundings that have become so familiar you don’t even see them anymore. What shifts when you actively look for beauty in the details?
I’d love to hear how you seek beauty in the comments!