My Kind of Beauty

On a recent hike I paused to admire a field of grass. Yep, grass. Many would think it odd, but I found that field of grass quite beautiful. The sunlight was streaming through just right, and the blade tips feathered out so delicately, shivering with the slightest breeze. I felt a little silly as my eyes teared up with the magnificence of that grass. That’s when I started to think about beauty, and how extremely personal it is to us all. In fact, we will vehemently disagree with another’s idea of what is or isn’t beautiful, and many times we even end up contradicting ourselves over our own definition of beauty.

After pondering this, I have decided that beauty is not a label that you place on things (or people) because of the way they look, but a description you place on things (or people) because of how they make you feel. Declaring that something (or someone) is beautiful isn't based on fact, or even on opinion; it is based on emotion influenced by perspective and context.

For example, I could proclaim the beauty of the grassy field that I saw on my morning hike, and later that same day, hasten to mow down the ugly blades on my own lawn. On a recent hike, I spied a marbled orb weaver spider, its beautifully intricate markings reminiscent of a Chinese pagoda sketch. If I had found that same spider in my dresser drawer, I would have screamed like a banshee and pounded it to smithereens. How could I think of something as beautiful one minute, and then the next minute be repulsed by the same thing? Wildflowers, spiders, and other creatures may be beautiful in their natural settings, but move them into your personal living space and they become weeds, pests, and other undesirable things that should be eliminated. That’s beauty according to context.

A person who loves the hustle and bustle of fast-paced life, with man-made entertainment and lots of stimulation, might see large cities as beautiful, while a person who dislikes crowds and tight spaces might see cities only as invitations to claustrophobia. Some might find mountains to be visions of beauty while city-lovers may see them as foreboding, dark, and dangerous. Different perspectives. 

This definition of beauty fits people, too. For instance, take my friends and family. To you, they may be overweight, too skinny, wrinkled, have crooked teeth, have no teeth (like my newborn great-nephew), have sagging body parts, liver spots, acne, scars, or too many bad hair days. But they are precious to me. The feeling that I get when I look at them can only mean one thing: they are beautiful. That’s my perspective.

"There is beauty in everything, but not everyone sees it." --Confucius