“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.” Rumi
We sometimes forget how important is to be reverent and look for beauty in our daily lives.
As we age, our lives get busier, the demands on our time increases, and less time is left for reverence and beauty. I refer to beauty as the delight in our hearts when we find something that touches us. The intrinsic quality of things, an aesthetic satisfaction that reverence can bring to the surface. Can we rescue the sense of beauty, its intrinsic quality, in our everyday life?
I think of the feeling of joy and depth that beauty can evoke in us, the transcendence from everyday life. This depth and joy provides us with the opportunity to feel complete and part of the wide world. Beauty brings us to the sense of being part of a bigger picture where we work, relate and live everyday. There is a miraculousness of the world that we bring to surface.
Usually we experience beauty through our senses. I find it fascinating to pay attention to our senses. The senses are connected to our brains and it is in our brains that we process our experiences. Wouldn’t it be worthwhile to pay attention to what are we exposing our senses/brain to in our everyday lives?
The senses are a powerful way to feel alive. However we need to be careful to not become beggars of our sensorial experiences, or slaves of pleasurable sensations. It is a fine balance to find beauty with our senses without believing that pleasurable states are the reason for our existence.
We can bring beauty to our hearts from art and nature, perceived with full conscious awareness. Through art and nature, we can be in touch with a deeper consciousness of belonging to humanity.
The beauty of nature invites us to a depth and joy that is even difficult to describe. Nature is beyond just descriptive words, I would need to rely on poetry for that. We can’t experience beauty in a rush though, we have to take some time to contemplate and take it in. It doesn’t take much but a few minutes to really absorb the beauty. Conscious awareness and appreciation of the beauty around us is the antidote to dullness in life. It is worth our time, to get away from our computers in regular intervals, and for brief moments contemplate some beauty. We might find that those moments will recharge our energies, so we can continue the task at hand with renewed perspectives.
It is important to rescue the human experience of sensing the world with awareness and appreciation. We all have experienced and appreciated, at some point in our lives, the beauty of a frog singing at night, or a bird singing, a child’s smile, a loving hug, or music that awakens feelings, experiences big in meaning. We probably have each a particular way to absorb beauty. Since we all have this capacity, let us pay attention, and invite more of these special and reverent moments that fill us with liveliness and belonging. If we take the time to perceive how we are receiving these gifts of beauty, we probably will experience more joy, depth, and productivity in our lives.
Have a beautiful life!