Seeing Beauty
Hidden Beauty
Beauty is harder to see than we realize. For a long time, I could look at the world and that was exactly what I would see, The World. A tree is a tree. A dirty alleyway is a dirty alleyway. A rainy day is a rainy day. Big deal. At some point in my life that changed. I think perhaps one of the things that helped change this was Dorothea Lange’s photography from the Great Depression era. The Great Depression was an ugly, dirty time for many people. Lange’s pictures capture all this, and yet somehow, they are absolutely beautiful. Lang found beauty in a situation most people would absolutely detest. Now, I see things a little different from how I did before. There is beauty all around us, we just aren’t used to seeing it. The bark on a sycamore tree is a beautiful tapestry of color — dapples of white and gray and brown, maybe even pink! A tiny dandelion plant sprouting out of an alleyway sidewalk creates a beautiful picture – a living organism emerging from trampled, scuffed concrete. A rainy day brings in grey clouds that contrast with bright green hills and arouses the sweet, beautiful smell of wet dirt or freshly sprinkled hot pavement.
Trained to See
There is a well known phrase that reads “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” I think it’s interesting that the phrase isn’t “beauty is before the eye of the beholder.” There may be beauty all around someone, but they must train themselves to see it with their own eyes in order for the beauty to be recognized. So right now, whether you’re inside or out, at home or at work, look around you. But don’t just look, see. See the beauty, because I guarantee you, it’s there.