CHANGE, Reminder #6 - Beauty Can Be Found In All Things
“Everything has beauty but not everyone sees it.” — Confucius
Noticing is an art.
Sound kind of weird? Well it probably does because noticing is something that has been out of touch, both in action and in word for some time now. If noticing is an art, then it is indeed a lost art-form… at least on one side of the fence.
In our modern world, especially in western society, we are very skilled at noticing what’s wrong, noticing what’s missing, noticing what we don’t like about a person or situation. But finding the good? Noticing what’s positive? Discovering the silver lining? Yeah, that’s something we’re quite weak in.
One of the strongest humans who would readily find the good in any situation was none other than: Helen Keller. Born in the late 1800’s, Helen became deaf and blind as a result of an unknown illness at 19-months of age. Through the help of her devoted teacher Anne Sullivan, Helen went on to learn how to read, write, and even speak, as well as becoming the first deaf-blind person to graduate from college. She lived a life of immense impact and much of it was credited to her unwavering optimism and courage. During her public memorial service, the Alabama Senator—Lister Hill—said in his eulogy: “She will live on, one of the few, the immortal names not born to die. Her spirit will endure as long as man can read and stories can be told of the woman who showed the world there are no boundaries to courage and faith.”
Here is one of Helen’s famous quotes that I find both challenging and convicting:
“If I, deaf, blind, find life rich and interesting, how much more can you gain by the use of your five senses!”
Helen Keller was able to find beauty in everything, even with the most dire of circumstances and the most challenging of obstacles. So why is it that most of us with two working eyes and two working ears struggle to find beauty in anything, especially in times of change?
Can beauty really be found in everything?
Finding beauty in everything is really hard to do. Many instances seem to have no redeemable aspect to them. A relative finding out stage-four cancer has invaded their body. A friend getting in a serious car accident. A beloved pet dying unexpectedly. A fire burning down your house and all your belongings with it. A unknown virus wiping out scores of people, especially those who are most vulnerable and susceptible in our society.
These are tragic events, instances where beauty isn’t readily seen or even found.
Redemption is the story of making what was broken new again—of taking the bad and turning it into good. Redemption is the reason I believe beauty can be found in everything. In the Christian-worldview, God is the source of all redemption, through partnering with His creation to bring about examples of that redemptive work. Even for those operating from a different worldview, redemption is still the source of hope in desperate times. It is the hope that says: “surely something good can come out of this, surely there is a silver lining.”
The deeper the hole of darkness, the harder it will be to find the light at the end of the tunnel. I by no means have been through personal experiences that could even sniff the darkest and deepest of holes, but in hearing from others who have, there remains a strand of hope to be found, a line to hold onto when nothing else remains… and I’m guessing that’s true of you as well.
Why don’t we look for it?
I believe that beauty can be found even in the most extreme circumstances (albeit there can always be exceptions), but the reality is, for most who are reading this now, you probably are not facing an “extreme” tragedy. Yet, the feeling of whatever tragedy or hardship you are facing is still very real, very present, and undoubtedly very loud in your thoughts and daily interactions.
In these times, we are prone to not look for the beauty. We don’t naturally think about the possibility of something good coming from a bad situation.
Simply put, we don’t look for the good especially in times of bad.
Why is this?
The most basic reason why is because the majority of everyone else doesn’t either.
I still remember the van rides during college golf. After every tournament, my teammates and I would start bantering about all our bad shots and the mistakes we made during the round (a form of self-deprecation). Our coach repeatedly got mad at us for this bad habit, and I’m so glad he did, because it illustrated to me the deceptively strong power of focusing on the negative. Even if I had played a really good round of golf, I still have an incredibly strong tendency to remember the few bad shots or mistakes I made that cost me precious strokes.
It’s easy to beat ourselves up; it’s much harder to build ourselves up.
The example of our golf team van rides also shows the power of the majority. When most people around you are talking about, focusing on, and encouraging the bad, it’s that much harder to highlight and dwell on the good. As we’ve heard in prior reminders, fear is our default, whereas love and belief take work. This tendency is made even stronger by the force of social proof—the power of the majority to sway our own ideas to theirs.
It’s hard to swim upstream, especially when most fish are swimming the opposite direction.
Another reason why we don’t tend to look for it is because we don’t feel like it. We don’t feel like putting in the work to combat our emotions with our mind. It doesn’t feel like what’s best, so we don’t put in the work. Think about why more people watch TV than read books—in one form the information is fed to you, in the other you have to find it.
Finding the good is harder than accepting the bad.
How can we train ourselves to find it?
Within this reminder, I want to give a few additional reminders we can use to train ourselves to find the beauty, even in the tragic:
Reminder #1: Understand that it takes training — it doesn’t just happen by chance.
Finding the beauty is a discipline. Disciplines, by nature, take work. We must put in the work if we want to develop the muscle, the ability, of finding the beauty in anything. Training is both effortful and intentional. Alongside putting in the work we must also infuse our intention—the reason for that work—so that we can overcome inevitable obstacles and make the habit endure.
Reminder #2: It also takes discovering—it won’t often be apparent and it may not be found in the first attempts.
Finding the beauty is a search. The discovering of it is usually a result of failed attempts of trial and error, of searching and not finding, before the searching and finding is possible.
Reminder #3: It is possible—the only limitations we have in this pursuit are the self-imposed limitations from disbelief.
Finding the beauty won’t happen unless we believe it can. We must see it as a worthy and attainable pursuit if we are to ever embark on it. The greatest enemy we have in finding it are our own, self-limiting beliefs.
Change is scary, challenging, unknown, uncomfortable. We will tend to see the bad in it. Our natural disposition will be to dwell on what we lose, what we dislike, what hardships it brings. Yet there is beauty in the midst of it all… if only we would look for it.
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
“Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”
— Helen Keller
