{Musings} On beauty.

{via}

Tonight, I find myself thinking about beauty. About perceptions of beauty, standards of beauty, art, music, beautiful people. Possibly because I spent about twenty minutes looking at pictures of Oscar's dresses that cost more than I make in a month of "hard labor," haha. I go through phases of my life when I am accepting of my body and phases where it is harder to look past the scars and stretch marks and ... not so toned bits.

But really, my point tonight is not to beat the dead horse of "be your own beautiful, magazine standards are not reality, etc." Instead, I'm thinking of beauty as a more abstract concept. I'm thinking of simple ways to fill my own life with beauty. There are times I'm better at this than others -- I've been known to buy myself flowers, I feel like I have reasonably good taste in art and music, I try to get outside in nature and experience the magnitude of something beyond myself.

But sometimes I slip away from that. I stress about how none of my clothes look good on me, on the crumbs underneath the chairs, about the fatigue that keeps me from accomplishing what I want to, cleaning the house, being productive.

All this to say, this week I want to focus on simply filling my life with more beauty, whether that is listening to music that is truly good instead of what is one the radio, taking a few minutes to tidy up the black hole that collects all the clutter in our home, putting on makeup before work so I don't feel like a slob when I look in the mirror. It takes a little more effort to put beauty in the world, especially when we are tired and drudgy and don't want to do anything but curl up in a ball under a soft blanket and watch Friends until falling asleep. I think beauty is a need -- I think that is why we seek it in others, why humanity produces art. I've been neglecting it lately.