Worse yet, I have watched films of the birth process. I’m not proud of this fact, and in my memory it was only by my wife’s coaxing, but I know I have seen them. In the films I saw, I had no idea who the lucky couple were, but I do remember that the camera person was not shy about using the close up lens, and I do remember closing my eyes often. The experience was nowhere near beautiful for me. Scary? Yes. Weird? Yes. High Gag Factor? Absolutely. But beautiful? Not so much. I did not experience the beautiful in these situations because they did not effect and touch me the way my personal experiences have.
My point in sharing these experiences is to prove, without a doubt, that beauty is a personal experience. It’s a preference, a feeling, a choice. Given that definition, we then are told by Webster’s that beauty is also “a beautiful person or thing; especially: a beautiful woman”. Whoa! Stop the press! If beauty is subjective, personal, and individual, how then, or better yet, who then, can say what, or who is beautiful? Who is in charge of making that decision. If you are female “and please stop to notice that beauty applies especially to females,” you already know the answer to this question. The people defining what beauty is are a group of lonely, angry, old men who would not know the first thing about true beauty if it bit them in the face! Actually, I am not sure if that is who all women think are defining what beauty is, but it may not be too far off. I do not know who has been defining what beauty is in terms of physical attractiveness, but I am sure that most, if not all, of the standards that we see for what is physically beautiful in the media has been altered in some way. There are some great links going around the Internet these days that show how photos of models, most of them female, are run through various computer programs before they are published. The finished product in these photos is a fantasy, an ideal, a computer generated myth that is setting the standard for what beauty should look like for many young females. Here is one example that makes this point:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcFlxSlOKNI
Before I go further, let me just pause to say that I am not writing this to blame, or shame, or point any of my fingers at the evil old men or young computer wizards, or whoever is in charge of portraying what they believe beauty to be in these various forms of media. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, not to mention their job, and we have already established that beauty, by it’s definition is a subjective and individual experience. So the blame should not rest solely on those who are paid to publish what they experience as beautiful, regardless of it is fantasy or not. My question for you is the same as I posed at the start of this blog: How do you define beauty? If you immediately answer in terms that relate to the images of physical beauty I have mentioned, I want to challenge you to think further. Define beauty for yourself. Go back in your life history and search out the most beautiful moments, the most beautiful people. Ask yourself what made these times and these people so special, so exalted in your mind? Work to relive the experience, to savor every moment of it in your mind. Feel it in every sense. Relive it. Now ask yourself how this experience, or this person relates to what you view or deem as beautiful now, at this point in your life.
I am willing to bet that part of what made the experience or the person you thought of beautiful goes back to the third definition we are given of beauty. Something about the memory is “particularly graceful, ornamental, or excellent.” Something set that time in your life apart – something made it different. Something spoke to your soul and said “this is it – this is truly beautiful.” The same can be said for the person you remember. I know this is true for children. I wanted to marry my third grade Art Teacher. She was, to me, beautiful. Her beauty, as I remember it, came from her laughter, her gentle smiles, and the wonderful art she would create for us. I am not an artist. Most of what I draw involves stick figures and trees that look like lollipops. But in her class I felt like Monet. She was graceful, ornamental, and excellent as a teacher. She was beautiful. I did not experience any other teachers during my entire educational career, including college and grad school in they way I experienced my third grade art teacher. That type of beauty is indeed rare. Who has touched your life with this rare type of beauty? And whose life have you touched in this way?
Which brings me to the fourth definition – the one I found most intriguing. In it, we are told, or perhaps reminded, that beauty is: “a brilliant, extreme, or egregious example or instance”. Beauty is rare. It is, by its very definition, not what we normally experience, or see in our everyday lives. It is elusive, and special, and we must be on the watch for beauty or we may miss it. We must be mindful and open to receive the beauty that is around us. We must also give it away to keep it beautiful, and special, and priceless. This time of year reminds us of this principle of beauty. The fall is my favorite season. I absolutely love the colors of the trees, the crisp, clear mornings and warm afternoons, and the smell of wood smoke in the air. My senses are pleasurably exalted by these natural wonders. I find the fall beautiful. And yet, it goes by so quickly. My family and I have been hiking over the last few weeks, and in that short time period we could see the leaves rapidly changing, we could sense the days getting shorter, the longer nights a tad colder. The beauty that is fall is fleeting, it cannot be lengthened, or altered, or experienced in any better way than as a brilliant and extreme example of nature’s ability to connect with our souls through a graceful, ornamental, and excellent phenomenon that begins and ends in a few weeks, a few days, a few hours. No amount of computer animation, or video clips, or photgraphs can touch the soul as much as experiencing the beauty of the season first hand – in real time. The same is true in our lives. The real beauty is there, it’s live, it’s waiting for you to recognize it.
This week, I want to encourage everyone to define beauty in your own life. I do not think that you will find in on television, in the movies, or in the pages of a gossip magazine. What you find there is not beauty. The pictures may look nice, but do they touch your senses? Do they connect with your soul? Or do they hold up a definition of beauty that is not real, that is not rare, and is in no way graceful and excellent. Seek beauty for yourself and in yourself. Connect with all that is beautiful within and around you. Enjoy the beauty while it lasts!
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