I Believe In Beauty

Sara Steele wrote this on her blog and I could not have said this better myself.

I believe in beauty.

I believe beauty has the capacity to heal, to change one’s mind, to literally alter cells (and I do mean literally not figuratively.) I believe there is far more beauty available to us than we generally notice. I stumble upon it and am stopped in my tracks, breathe in, feel suddenly grateful -- for the encounter, for my capacity to perceive, for the simple fact that both the beautiful thing and I exist.

The beautiful thing is not necessarily an object. It may be birdsong, an angle of light at a particular time of day, a few words I overhear, something I discover while reading, an idea, a sensation. In the moment of that encounter my attention is riveted, and whether for a few seconds or several hours, that is all that exists. There is no ego-me, only the lucky appreciator.

In that space/time when my attention is so completely held, I can almost feel neural pathways re-routing themselves, mapping better, healthier pathways. (Researchers now say this actually happens when one shifts one’s attention for as little as fifteen seconds.)

I believe beauty has the capacity to heal.

This is why I spend my time as I do: because over and over again I have been healed by these encounters. I don’t know what else to do but pay as much attention to them as I can. It is the antidote to despair, to helplessness, to being overwhelmingly saddened to the point of incapacitation by all the devastation that goes on in the world, people willfully hurting others, destroying natural resources, greed, power-over . . . on and on. I can become paralyzed by the vastness of it all.

It is within my power to return to beauty.

I believe beauty has the capacity to heal.

I believe in the possibility of healing.

I believe in beauty.