Words: Clare Dwyer Hogg
Image: Barney Beech
Beauty has been on my mind. It’s part of my quest to dig down into the small things of life, I suppose. I am always amazed – a big word, but I am – by how much soul-filling the small beautiful things do. It’s almost magical, or counter-intuitive (which is what magic is, really), to see how much a small beautiful thing can disproportionately fill up my soul. When I say that, I mean flood my senses with good, add oxygen to my breathing, set my mind on things that are life-giving.
When I went to Paris a year ago, I felt it. I hadn’t at all expected it to be a relaxing holiday (given that I was there with small people), but when I returned home, I really felt rejuvenated. It was as if I’d had three days of refreshing sleep, because my mind and vision had been saturated by beauty from all sides. The buildings, the river, shop windows with towers of patisserie… I had the realisation that filling my eyes with beauty isn’t just a snap-shot, but goes deep. And the beauty doesn’t sink, either, waiting for memory to uncover it at whim. Rather, it is some sort of catalyst, adjusting and changing how you feel and think. It’s dynamic, like a seed. Feasting your senses on beauty is a planting of something that is powerful.
But what strikes me is the importance of not feeling that beauty lies elsewhere. It does, of course. But where I am is elsewhere for someone else. Why do I make sure to look up at buildings when I’m in New York, but forget when I’m in London? Because one is a holiday, the other is life. That is pretty thoughtless living on my part. In the big picture, my everyday life is more important than a holiday. Beauty is everywhere. So why wouldn’t I drink it in wherever I am? Why walk through days without it?
Beauty in the small things. It is there, even in the mundane. It pushes through cracks. If only we could recognise it
I’m talking about the tiniest of little things here. A flower growing through a crack in the pavement. The birds that are suddenly singing this month. Seeing the moon, clear and bright in the dark sky, and looking at it for longer than a glance. The shadow of a tree on an urban wall. These are the kind of things that children notice. But there’s nothing childlike about the alchemy that happens when you take them in, through your eyes, and let them go deeper.
There is something crucial about deciding consciously to do this. This is about developing a pattern of thought that widens (or maybe even enables) vision. Once the pattern is established, I think the little things of beauty crowd into my vision, because the vision is there, waiting.
I don’t limit this to objects or things, though. It’s about the small beautiful aspects of people we encounter, too. It’s about trying to cultivate a vision that spies what is beauty in their actions or speech or manner. I think our ideas of beauty have created traps – I know, because I fall into them so often – that have mistuned us. Sometimes it feels as if we are on such high alert for the façade of beauty, we have become out of touch with what constitutes its meaningful revelations.
I think the small actions and kindnesses people do for one another are beautiful. They’re there, like receptors, waiting to be touched with acknowledgement. There is life brimming within them. The alchemy – for both parties – requires connection, which begins with vision.
Beauty in the small things. It is there, even in the mundane. It pushes through cracks. If only we could recognise it, the sense of fulfilment in our every day would be so much greater.
