Beauty is my OneWord365 for this year. Beauty and I are off to a slow start.
Part of the problem is that I don’t really know how to track beauty. I have my trusty Pinterest board to help, but beauty is not necessarily a tangible thing. Tangible things can be beautiful, but the beauty of a thing (or person) usually lies within its (or his/her) story. And stories take time to unfold and be told.
What mainly trips me up, though, is my tendency to see things as not quite beautiful when they’re not quite done. I want a nice, finished project. And I see patterns and gaps pretty easily. This is helpful, because the first step is admitting the problem, but it also gets me bogged down in details and what-could-bes, and I miss the beautiful moments.
I see:
1. A day planned for writing wasted because I sliced my finger, and how ridiculously long it’s going to be to write this post without using that finger. On the upside, I am a little impressed with myself at how fast I’m learning to type four-fingered with my left hand.
2. A plan for Pilates ruined by an iffy stomach. On the upside, I successfully recognized the trigger in time to avoid pushing it, thereby avoiding another nasty, week(s)-long episode of digestive woes. Plus, I got a nap and soup.
3. A plan for a clean kitchen put on hold because of that ridiculous finger. I’m not seeing an upside to this yet. My kitchen is hideous and desperately in need of a scrub-down, y’all.
And that was just yesterday.
So apparently I’m going to learn to see beauty in the process this year. Neat.
I also think there’s something to beauty as found through story, so I’m going to explore that. I’m going to spend some time reading about beauty (Is reading a love language? Because it totally should be). The first four on the list are The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, On Beauty by Zadie Smith, Child of my Heart by Alice McDermott, and She Walks in Beauty: a Woman’s Journey through Poems by Caroline Kennedy.
I’m also linking up with Amy Young’s Trusting Tuesdays. Click over to read how others’ OneWord365 journeys are going!
M. Suzanne Terry 
I can only imagine now how beauty is going to weave her way into all nooks and crannies! And thanks for linking up … I look forward to seeing February holds 🙂
I’m excited to see February’s beauty, too. Thanks for reading, Amy (and for hosting the link-up)!
Mmm… that sounds like a stellar reading list! I’m a reader too, so I’m excited to hear what you have to say about those books. Though I have to warn you that I was disappointed by On Beauty, it was not nearly as good as her book White Teeth (in my humble opinion).
I heard the same thing, too. I’m glad this will be the first of hers that I’m reading, but White Teeth is definitely on my reading list as well. Maybe next month…
So good! I think this is going to be a great word. It is totally possible to find beauty anywhere but I do agree it sure takes some looking at times!!
Thanks for reading! I hope I’ll learn to find it more readily.
I enjoy your take on beauty! Sometimes it IS easier to think of it in purely visual terms but is really much more than that. If you like listening to TED Talks, NPR had a compilation of several [excerpted] talks on beauty recently and I found the different perspectives fascinating: http://www.npr.org/2013/04/19/174724704/what-is-beauty?showDate=2013-12-27
Oh, that’s fantastic! Thank you. I do enjoy TED talks, and I’ll be giving these a listen.
I will probably also make my students watch them. I’m sure they thank you, too. 🙂