Walks have been more since it is no longer outdoor swimming season. I’ve learned that swimming helps my health and as does walking. So during the warmer days I swim when I can and walk when I can’t . The walks does something wonderful, you get to see things in a new perspective and sometimes you get to meet most of the time happy, friendly, and happy people.
It was on one of my walks that a friendly neighbor said something I’ve heard a million times. But this time it struck differently. He was painting a white fence- more with appearance of aged wood then painted. He sat on a bucket and carefully painted each spindel. As we commented on his work he lit up with a grin at our noticing then said “Beauty is work.”
Work that he’d rather not do, but desire for beauty convince him to be discipline. He saw beyond the moment in time to something that would bring something of value. I’ve always heard “Beauty is work.” but rarely have I seen it associated with in process application outside of my family or terms of “art” while spoken. No matter, how it is work there is something to be said for that phrase. If nothing else beauty requires that you *see* and appreciate it for it to be beautiful to you.
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This journey reminds me of Photography of a little bit. Photography is a tool that expresses colors, textures, emotions- it tells a story. Whether it is true or false it tells you something.
The desire to tell a good story, the desire of beauty, most of the all the intense longing to make a different is what propels a photographer to hone in their craft. To wade in freezing waters, to wake before the crack of dawn, to exercise to make the heavy equipment easier to carry, to simply have a chance to to capture beauty- make beauty- or at least make a difference even its brutally hard to change a life for the better which in itself is its own beauty that comes at a very hard cost. It is the same for anyone desiring beauty in the home, in the gardens, in the art, and in their life.
Beauty takes work
I wish projects that are in the process of becoming beautiful are done in a blink of an eye. Yet, I wonder if we would enjoy it half as much. As beauty is work, it also takes time. Time to see it, to grow it, to envision it, and create it. I’ve learned that patience and discipline is much of the behind the scenes work just as important as appreciating it when the work is in process and when it’s done. But there is one thing that beauty does that is often overlooked:
“Kill despair with beauty.”
Timothy Willard
To see beauty is to start to heal something within you. It kills perhaps very slowly despair. I know this enough to uncomfortable yet comfortably state this with confidence. Uncomfortable because I’m being real with you in stating I know despair and I know it well. But I also know the flip side of despair. I know what helps heal, a tool that is used in combination with thanksgiving to kill despair. It is work, it is being discipline to stay the course of seeing, of hearing, of surrounding yourself, of creating, and soaking it all in.