beauty defined (page 1)
“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”
-Henry David Thoreau
Beauty. It means different things to different people.
Merriam-Webster defines beauty as “the quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit.”
“ Gives pleasure to the senses.” Yes! That is exactly what beauty does for me! It’s like being wrapped in the softest sweater. I can’t help but smile.
Beauty is not just seen with the eye. Each of our senses can take the lead in finding it.
I can hear it, like the sound of birds outside my window or the ocean’s waves stirring. I can touch it, like the feeling of swimming in the salty sea or the warmth of the sand under my feet. I can also taste it like a ripened tomato just picked from the garden or the first bite of a warm piece of bread. I can smell it like the scent of lilac as I walk past or, better yet, drifting into an opened window like a sweet surprise.
It even goes beyond the five senses for me. I see beauty in learning something new. In nourishing myself, honoring my body for all that it does for me. In connecting spiritually to something greater than myself. In exploring the world, crossing seas and oceans to go where I have never been to experience things I have never seen.
In also creating beauty with my own hands, creating something from nothing, now that is beauty. And in my biggest lesson to learn is choosing to see love in all things over fear. See, I have a natural tendency to be anxious. It’s percolated in the background my entire life. But I know I must consciously choose what I see because I realize, what I see IS my life… I get to choose. How beautiful is that?!
So, let’s look for beauty together. Let’s choose to see what is beautiful every day, like this little orange leaf that stood out brighter than all the rest.
I challenge myself, and I challenge you, let’s choose our lives and how we see it, let’s look for the beauty… every day. ❤️
