Loving Beauty

Lately I have been craving more beauty in my home environment — beauty of a different kind than is in my home now. I have been longing for more green (of the leafy sort), softer textures, more organic sensibilities.
 
That’s not all that surprising, but what has been surprising to me is how hard it has been for me to be okay with that wanting.
 
Beauty is really important to me. That’s the truth. I’m sensitive to it, to where it’s missing.
 
I’m starting to realize that, deep down, I have not been comfortable with my own great love of beauty. I tend to see it as “light,” a little frivolous, not the important stuff. I see it as the icing on the cake, not the cake itself. As if it’s extra — after the core stuff is taken care of, we can worry about making it beautiful. After all, so many people are living without the basics of food and shelter— how can the rest of us be worrying about, investing in — the beauty of our daily lives?
 
Another part of me knows: that narrative about the frivolity of beauty is not true. Another part of me knows: beauty is important. It is important because beauty connects us to joy, to contentment, to our souls. Beauty is soul food. This is not a fluffy matter.
 
These past few days I was travelling for work, speaking at a United Way women’s fundraising event in Oregon. I got very lucky, because the organizers of the event didn’t put me up at some random business express chain hotel, but at a 100-year old historic inn in the beautiful town of Ashland. I stayed in an adorable, floral, Victorian suite full of antiques and beautiful things. A handwritten Shakespeare quote was left on my pillow every evening.
 
Beauty.
 
It is absolutely the case that because of the environment, I was able to slip quickly into a contented solitude that I know I would not have been able to find so immediately and easily, had I been in a different environment. Because of the open, airy, peaceful space, I had more creative thoughts. Because of the serenity of the atmosphere — from the colors to the patterns to the music playing, I was able to slow down and recharge with ease.
 
Most of the environments we are in daily don’t do this for us. They actually assault our senses, clutter our thinking, and disconnect us from the sweet song within. Gray concrete highways dotted with unattractive billboards are not worthy of what we sacred human beings are. Airport cacophonies; ugly, cold hospitals; littered streets are not worthy of what we are.
 
Beauty has been marginalized in our culture because it has become associated with the feminine. This wasn’t always the case. In earlier periods, beauty was strongly associated with masculinity, and, no surprise, during those times, beauty was seen as a necessity in our architecture and city planning, and art was more valued in the culture. Just think about how, as a society today, we value a publication like Newsweek, and how we value one like House Beautiful. That is a subjective system of value — and it is not the only possible one. Think about what’s considered important for kids to learn about in school, and what isn’t. Beauty is largely absent from the picture. That’s not the only way possible.
 
Even as I have created a beautiful home, adorned myself in things I find beautiful, and supported the work of artists I enjoy, I can see that I have also stopped myself short from embracing beauty at a level that fully reflects it’s importance to my spirit.
 
That is because in some small, quiet way, I have been embarrassed about how important beauty is to me. I’ve held some belief that there is something selfish and frivolous in that love. I am surprised by this truth: it feels as scary, as radical, to own my love of beauty and to act based on it, as it has been to claim my voice as a writer and step into the name “poet.” Both are a vulnerable claiming of who I really am.
 
I would like to find comfort with my love of beauty, my belief that it is essential, because my hunger to live in beauty is core to who I am.
 
Love,
 
Tara