On Beauty

It's been awhile since I've posted, but now's not the time for updates. I've been thinking about beauty. What it means, what it feels like. We live in a society that's obsessed with it. Or thinks it's obsessed with it. I'm not so sure we haven't missed the mark on this one. ```

In art, beauty is a lottery ticket. If you hit on true beauty you can move nations. But true beauty is quite elusive. What's beautiful in one time or place is not so beautiful to another group of people. Art critics try to corner this concept, some even go so far as to say that one of the criteria for the truly aesthetic is that it is relevant or moves the people of it's time and place. And yet, so many artists have created beautiful work that wasn't admired or appreciated 'til years later. Is their work not beautiful?

Living in this particular time and place can be difficult in terms of beauty. As a young American woman I find myself thinking about it for hours , taking it to what I feel are superficial and frankly unhealthy extents...but I am not even half as engrossed as many of my fellow young American women. Shoot, I only put on make-up like twice a week!Still I think about it often, I have moments when I assure myself that I have a rocking body, that my looks are stunning, exquisite, rare. Then there are those, more frequent moments in which I cry and pout and blame the universe for the fact that I look like I'm 12, that I'm having a bad hair day, that the stupid dog nearly knocked my tooth out and now I have to wear a retainer for 3 months ( which of course adds to the prepubescent problem).

There are times when I consider beauty in a more reflective,  outreaching way. Times when I stop and smell roses,times when I marvel at someone else's genius, but those moments don't happen enough.It seems like mostly I don't take notice until beauty is staring me straight in the face.

Can something be truly beautiful if only one person ever sees it? I am beautiful to Justin in a way that no one else will ever see or ever know. Justin's every breath is beautiful to me. No really, I'm not just trying to be cheesy here. I think about those moments in my life where I really truly saw beauty; in a painting,  a movie, in a rose. Once I went running in some dusty old hills, I parted from the trail and made my way through the ugliest patch of thorns and weeds and then happened upon a little valley covered in these purple flowers. I knelt down and thanked God for that beautiful moment, and then I begged him to forgive me for being blind.

If you're like me, you are probably tired of not seeing. Tired of staring straight ahead and pushing hurriedly forward, just to find out you aren't really going anywhere at all. It's time for me to open my eyes and see what's beautiful. I have a feeling I won't see it in magazines either.