TAKE A BREAK

One of those soul-hushing mornings - ”like the first morning” - a friend said, “Let’s take a beauty break.”

“A beauty break.” So many choices: a golden butterfly on a blue lobelia, a ruby-throated hummingbird on the Japanese lilac bush, light shining like water off green pine needles. Earth, air, sky, clouds, sea, anywhere, everywhere, beauty is omnipresent. All it asks is, “Look, see, feel, respond, express.”

In a world convulsed with misery, some may ask, “Why bother with such an abstraction as beauty? Does it even exist? And if it does, what difference does it make?”

Ignore the cynics, those whom Oscar Wilde described as knowing the cost of everything but the value of nothing. Watch a baby reach for a soap bubble. Listen as a four year old sees her first butterfly and cries, “Look, Daddy, a flying flower.” Go into memory. Recall a first: sight of sea, sparrow, snapdragon, snow, frost. Recall any awakening: first love, first kiss, Mother or Father crooning a lullaby. Hear the rolling thunder, surf, wind over sand, Walt Whitman’s “When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom’d,” Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “the world is charged with the grandeur of God - it will flame out like shining from shook foil.”

Ignore the cynics. Listen to William Hazlitt (l778-l830): “The contemplation of truth and beauty is the proper object for which we were created, which calls forth the most intense desires of the soul and of which it never tires.”

Dwell on the beauty in Nature and in Human Nature. Remember all those who love you, who loved you, who believe in you, who believed in you, who encourage and help you, whose faces lit up, light up at the sight of you, whose voices took on warmth and joy as they greeted you, and made you feel welcome, accepted, loved.

Albert Einstein (l879-1955) wrote: “The ideals which have lighted my way and time after time have given me courage to face life cheerfully have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth--the trite subjects of human efforts-possessions, outward success, luxury-have always seemed to me contemptible.”

Even a postage stamp has six sides. It is not a thing to be wondered at that not everyone will agree on beauty or any other abstraction. Thomas Carlyle (l795-1881) felt what many today feel: “The truth is many have lost their belief in the invisible - it is no longer a worship of the Beautiful and the Good but a calculation of the profitable.”

It is sad that so many have lost faith in beauty and goodness. If we didn’t know the pendulum swing of history; if we forgot the vision of our founding fathers and mothers and thought only of the Nihilism of the l990’s, we might despair. But we know and we know that we know that beauty and truth not only endure but will triumph.

When a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology asked Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895-l993) whether he considered aesthetic factors when he tackled a technical problem, Fuller answered:

“No. When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only of how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, it is wrong.”

Is beauty really in the eyes of the beholder, or can it be measured? A Stanford graduate, Phi Beta Kappa, told of her art professor’s experiment with the human body. Fifty male students and fifty female students volunteered to help him. He had cameras set up in two different rooms, one for the females, one for the males. Using a single negative in each camera, he had the nude subjects - one at a time - face the camera as he clicked away. The developed composite negative of the females revealed the solid dark dimensions of the Venus de Milo, while that of the males showed the same proportions as the Apollo Belvedere. Ironically, millions diet, exercise daily so their bodies will resemble Mr., Ms., Miss, Mrs. Average.

Even if beauty could be qualified, quantified, would everyone agree on the most handsome, the most beautiful?

The purpose of your beauty break isn’t so you can discover another’s sense of beauty. It is to discover, accept, celebrate, respect your own idea of beauty.

Our beauty breaks should train us to see with the heart. As Nadine Warner said, “Anyone can love the lovely. We are called to love the unlovely into loveliness.”