Everything is beautiful

Today I took my camera and took happy snaps of my bedroom using my fabulous new camera. It started when I looked up from where I was sitting having coffee, to see a kitchen sponge on the table looking so moody, so dignified and so peaceful that I was inspired to catch it on film (well memory card). After that I went looking for other beautiful things that seemed worth documenting and sharing. I thought I’d post pictures you see, rather than words, and in doing so share some intimate reflections on life in another way, and maybe share a feeling of Sunday afternoon fascination with life, and enjoyment of colours. It was a little project on noting the minutae that we normally consider insignificant, but that through the right lens can be everything as significant, engaging, and beautiful as anything else.

As I took photos I thought ‘aaah, mess’, because I have a brief twinge of guilt that accompanies the joy I feel at my happy clutter, but you’ll be pleased to know that I didn’t tidy up first, I left it there as is, in all its messy glory. My beautiful, messy, cluttered room.

I also thought ‘ooh, maybe that’s too intimate, strangers shouldn’t see your bedroom, it’s like seeing you, and blogs are meant to be a wee bit anonymous’. But I reckon that honesty is in such short supply that it should be allowed to come out in whatever brief and erratic bursts it feels like coming in. And really, what’s the harm?

Why?
I think all this ‘celebrating ordinary beauty’ has been inspired in part by the 2 talks I saw by Satish Kumar [who? see below] just recently, a sustainability and peace speaker / writer / activist. Also, my mum is teaching a few of her friends an introduction to design course, and (how sweet is she?) she typed up lesson plans and notes so that I could join in too via phone, interstate. One of the exercises is to keep a ‘beauty diary’ and reflect every day about what beauty is. Of course I’m a crap student and have missed lots of days, but what I have done so far has been interesting. the whole notion of beauty is so fraught, I reckon, and so commodified, and hackneyed, that it is interesting to dig a little into what makes up ‘beauty’ or what the range of feelings are that we give this word to, or the range of things that get given this word.


More about Satish
He started off as a Jaain monk, then went around the world on foot for peace during the cold war - without any money or possessions; a peace pilgrimage, to visit the leaders of the nuclear superpowers and talk about peace. Since then he has written books, heads up Schumacher College and edits a progressive sustainability / spirituality magazine called ‘resurgence’. He talks a lot about the importance of having joy in your life and of embracing beauty – of nature, of things made by hand, and of making time to nurture yourself, care for your self, so you can also care for your family, neighbours, community and the planet. He is an unashamed critic of industrial capitalism as a system, because he sees it as having money at the centre of its value system, rather than a respect for and a desire to ensure the wellbeing of all humans and other living creatures. (Which to mind seems pretty true). Yes he comes across as an idealist and a little naïve* but in the nicest of ways. Because really, where is the vision in mainstream dialogue about the future? What is the ‘vision’ about our society which is up for discussion in the pre-federal election talk both here and in the US at present? In Australia it’s all about pushing money around from one vote winning exercise to another. There is some discussion about exactly how much more money should be given to childcare and how, how much money should be given to education and how, how many tax cuts should be given and to whom. Sure there is some power struggling between small business and employers (as if these are such homogenous groups without overlap) to see whose rights should be most protected by law when it comes to pay and hiring and firing; and there is a lot of hyperbole about water and greenhouse, with either party using the drought and global warming to justify their preferred governance reforms and industry intervention / support regimes, but really, really really really – what’s different? The implicit assumption is that how we live now is fine, that’s what we want to ‘protect’, and what we all want to aim for in the future is more money, more stuff, more prestige, and a very very easy life. In this context, it is refreshing to hear some healthy self-reflection and wondering about alternatives – more peaceful, equitable, joyous, less fearful and less damaging lifestyles. And sure it might be utopian, but shouldn’t we worry about a society in which being a peaceful dreamer is derided?

*(in fact I told my housemates that he reminded me a little bit of Yoda from Starwars, and then cheekily impersonated him for their entertainment in the kitchen last night, but lets not dwell on that)