I was in a great mood yesterday. Maybe it was getting my first of three midterms this week out of the way, I don’t know, but it was nice being so happy! I smiled and laughed as I biked to class, getting more than a few looks from weirded-out passersby. I looked around and realized: ugliness doesn’t exist. There is a way to see everything as beautiful, difficult as it may be. I choose to see a few things as ugly, but this is just how I perceive them, not as they inherently are. Most of the things I see as ugly aren’t tangible, things like cruelty and racism and destruction. When it comes to tangible things, I see ugliness when humans violate nature, devastating all that once was for our benefit. Natural things are gorgeous, artificiality creates ugliness. Everything I think is ugly only exists within human societies.
Once I decided that ugliness does not exist, I noticed how often I say things are ugly. This is wrong! The things I view as ugly are truly repulsive, and thankfully, aren’t in my life very often. I’ve made a vow to use the term sparingly and to look for beauty as often as I can; though I’ll never find beauty in the things that are truly ugly to me. Beauty is much easier to find. Beauty can be found by looking at a rock up close, noticing the differences in people’s walks, seeing the wind blow leaves around, running in the rain, thinking about how efficiently our bodies work. It’s so cliché to say “beauty is everywhere” but yeah, I think that’s pretty much what I’m getting at!
