How Much Beauty I See Depends On Me

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

close-up of a tiny green and black frog sitting between orange petals of a rose., looking right at you. — A tiny frog in a rose bloom at Evergreen. This is definitely beautiful! Photo by Rob.

Beauty is everywhere.

But I have listed below three things I saw today that weren't beautiful.

1. Leaves scattered willy-nilly across an expanse of bright green grass.

2. Dirt on the kitchen floor.

3. An ice cream wrapper flapping down York Street and landing in the gutter.

These sorts of things are ugly. They shouldn’t exist. They have no right to be here, ruining my day. They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I am the beholder and I see no beauty in these three things. I don’t want to look at them. They offend me. Spoil my view. Ruin my day!

Then I read this in Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace by John O’Donohue (2003, p. 29):

We have often heard that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This is usually taken to mean that the sense of beauty is utterly subjective; there is no accounting for taste because each person’s taste is different.

This is the meaning I’ve always taken from that saying. I decide for myself what’s beautiful to me. But O’Donohue goes on to say that there is a more subtle meaning to this.

. . . if our style of looking becomes beautiful, then beauty will become visible and shine forth for us. We will be surprised to discover beauty in unexpected places where the ungraceful eye would never linger.

He seems to be implying that beauty is everywhere, in everything, if only I had the graceful eyes to see it; and that if my style of looking becomes beautiful, then I will see beauty in unexpected places.

Certainly, a littered lawn, a dirty floor and a gutter are unexpected places to find beauty.

However, O’Donohue was a wiser person than I’ll ever be, so I take his words seriously and re-evaluate the snap decisions I made today about things that lack beauty.

Leaves

When I recall the leaves scattered willy-nilly across an expanse of bright green grass, I concede that there was beauty present. The random splashes of autumn colours against the rich green did have a certain aesthetic appeal. Some of them were damp from the rain and they shone when the sun came out. The view wasn’t neat and tidy, but, looking back with more graceful eyes, I can now see that it held delight – and beauty.

Dirt

Dirt on the kitchen floor. Hmm. This is a bit harder. I must get my vacuum cleaner and suck it out of existence.

Just before I do, I take a closer look.

A bit of dirt isn’t horrible or ugly, of itself. It’s just a bit of dirt. Why do I feel this revulsion? I even sense a bit of anger and a tinge of annoyance that it’s here because this bit of dirt is forcing me to do something about it. My brain is on overdrive and my stomach churns. I’m feverish. There’s a beeping in my head. Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!

I’m momentarily appalled. Revulsion. Anger. Annoyance. A war zone! All for a bit of dirt.

My eye catches a dust mote – no, not one – hundreds – no – thousands – of dust motes! – floating through the air in a shaft of sunlight streaming through the house. They head down to the floor like an invading army. No, they're not an invading army. They're a host of miraculous sprinkles of stuff, caught in the Earth’s gravitational force, finding their way to the ground.

They land on the kitchen floor.

I bend down and have a closer look. Such tiny, whimsical things.

Suddenly, the only emotion I’m feeling is calmness.

I’m still going to plug in the vacuum cleaner. But in a minute. At the moment I’m accepting these harmless bits of stuff being their little selves on my floor, gathering together, becoming dirt.

Ice Cream Wrapper

But what about that filthy ice cream wrapper in the gutter in York Street? No, I draw the line at that. It’s nothing but disgusting. And look, it’s wet, and sticky, and squashed.

Oh, but remember how the wrapper rode the wind that was rushing up York Street. It flipped and danced in the invisible gale, bounced off the road, was spun sideways by a passing car, and flopped into the gutter at my feet. It shivered slightly, then was still.

Yes, it’s going in the bin. But it has packed more adventure into its little life than I’ve ever had. And its colours of deep chocolate brown and gold. reminded me of an autumn leaf. What beauty!

What else has my ungraceful eyes thought of as ugly?

A weed amongst the violas. A tiger snake in the undergrowth. A pothole in the driveway.

Of course, I’m going to pull out that weed, shoo away that snake, and fill the pothole. But before I do, I will take a moment to notice the tiny weedy leaves; the yellow-toned gleam on the tiger snake’s belly; the stillness of the rocks exposed by the pothole.