A Thing of Beauty...

Toward the end of last week (couldn't even tell you what day for certain) I sat, feeling rather harried, in the office of a co-worker to review preparations for a campaign that launches, hopefully, this week. It had been a long day and the strain of constantly changing directions, expanding expectations and contracting deadlines was showing pretty clearly on my face. A little volume on his desk caught my eye (from the Everyman's Library) and when he noticed, he exclaimed "Oh! You've got to read this! It's beautiful! especially if you're in love." I am not in love, but it was beautiful. And I left his office fairly sparkling with creative energy and a renewed zest for life, love and everything in between.

The experience reaffirmed my conviction in the rejuvenating, re-invigorating, even resuscitating power of beauty--and the importance, therefore, of keeping it literally always within arm's reach.

This finger-tip beauty can take many forms. I know a great-grandmother in NewMarket, Ontario who keeps a canary named Bing on her kitchen windowsill. Another friend picks up fresh flowers every week from the farmers' market. One collegue has a book of Polish posters; all full color on gorgeous (I think it's cougar) paper standing in the corner of his desk. Another grows orchids.

Some beauty of course cannot be captured, and some won't wait patiently on a shelf or in a drawer for you to pull it out and appreciate it. Most, in fact, seems far too grand to be influenced at all and I have to count myself blessed to be a witness as it streaks past, floats by, or explodes around me; there were birds singing this morning--first time I've heard them since Fall. And I once saw a double rainbow wrapped all the way around the sun.

Still, I have to believe that making a space for beauty in our lives will in turn make us more able to create it, both around and within us.