Chase Beauty
Chase Beauty
Beauty sounds petty to many of us; we will avoid the subject for sheer embarrassment.
Ugliness and hardness are the ways of the world we believe in but we will also not voice that for fear of being tagged as pessimistic. So, we speak of beauty in public but have no relationship with it in private.
It is in how we see flowers and think they are beautiful yet buy only artificial flowers in our homes because “I don’t have time to tend anything”. It is how we say “awwwwwwn God When” on Instagram but will do nothing to be romantically available.
Our concept of a relationship with beauty is a fling that never begins.
In 2019, I wrote a series called ‘Lessons from the Animal Kingdom’ in which I explored parallels between our relationships and some animals while simultaneously writing about Beauty in Unlikely Places. I discovered the beauty that vultures sustain in our ecosystem (scavengers as a whole actually) and the beauty snake venom can add to our medical practice if we can breakthrough that research.
As weird as this sounds, this was me in search of beauty at a time when I had lost humans to death, professional opportunities and relationships. I had a choice to mop around or go in search of beauty.
Last year, I allowed some birds to build their nests in my compound. Every morning while I wrote and designed a media plan or website, I would have birds chirping by my work window — their friends always came for the morning hangout. I am sound sensitive, but that was one sound I was willing to live with for the two hours they had their parties.
It is not the big things but the small things — the willingness to walk a little more slowly when it rains so you have an excuse to be out in the rain, walks without your headset so you can see without distractions and hear the stories in your mind and those around you, the courage to plant a garden knowing you have to tend it every day even if you forget to check on it daily — the little things.
When I focused on therapy, I became consumed with all the negative news in my field. I remember stories of incest and parental neglect, serial rape, manipulations and much more. I realized I was fast becoming more cynical and pessimistic. I would meet people and think, “This person could be a rapist or a serial killer”. I was consuming negative news everywhere because I did not know how to focus.
Somehow, I accidentally returned to the chase for beauty. Darkness will always loom; you go focus on the light.
Trauma will always attempt to show itself so it is my duty to track down healing. I do not need to search for trauma — one Quora question is enough, one newspaper daily will suffice, one Instagram account that curates such is enough, and one friend at the civil rights office will fetch you the updates.
In a world where mental health is suicide, rape and addiction campaigns, you must remember that mental health is also rest, sanity and beauty campaigns— no one is coming to remind you of this.
In marketing, you write every copy to appeal to the readers such that they have a sense of urgency. Copies that trigger negative feelings and make the reader feel disempowered if they do not purchase are known to sell far better than copies that make the reader think of more enjoyment. Why? The latter still leaves the reader feeling like their lives work and can work better — it does not trigger fear and internal pressure.
Every day, thousands of advertising campaigns are designed to trigger your negative perspective of life. Even in the wellness space, it is not abnormal to find sales copies that make you cuss yourself out.
Even wellness organizations are now suggesting you should get in debt to recover from trauma or get better skincare routines when they are well aware that financial debt will leave you more anxious. This is all the clue you need to know that you are merely a product on most days.
It is your prerogative to find beauty in unlikely places, hunt down beauty if you have to, draw boundaries in your mind, gauge what you consume and decide who has access to you.
No one is coming to save you from the ugliness in this world — even your therapist is on a mind detox journey once they leave their office (to detox from the day’s cases, life’s ugly realities and the tension in their everyday lives).
How to discover and keep beauty
Recognize the ugliness you are prone to seeing: for me, it was trauma, failing relationships and the impact on society. So, when I searched for beauty, I searched for intergenerational functional relationships.
Reword it everywhere you can and focus on the solution, not the problem: If you look at my profiles, you will find generational healing instead of generational trauma. Also, you are likely to find sexual wellness more repeatedly instead of sexual trauma.
Disconnect from the ugliness collectors: there are platforms everywhere dedicated to just collecting bad news. I am not oblivious of evil but I do not chase it. I have a mail that is subscribed to all the creepy things therapists do to hurt their clients, but I do not go there every day using it as a bedtime read. How can crime and traumatic events be your bedtime reads if you have not overly accustomed yourself to ugliness?
Connect with beauty collectors: find platforms that remind you of the beauty in this world. There was a time when I just followed baby accounts and watched them giggle, I watched dancers and skaters do their thing and allowed myself to enjoy the art. Yes, there might be trauma there, but I will not miss the beauty — that is a personal decision.
Invest in physical beauty: do something with your hands that leads to more beauty. This can be taking up artistic endeavours, research around beauty, gardening, hosting small gatherings, running a book club for kids, walking daily and exploring nature.
Invest in self-care: I mean real self-care, not the sham stuff. If you have been putting off decluttering your wardrobe and workspace or postponing your rest, spa experience, skin work, therapy session…whatever it is, go and do it for the right reason.
Invest in your home: you have got to get home and feel like you slammed your door to ugliness. Home should be both emotionally and physically attractive to you and don’t miss out on the opportunity to make that your sexual haven … I mean, what is home for?
Connect with beautiful stories: this can be through movies, books, and even reality shows on YouTube. But best, connect individually with humans who have experienced more beauty than you, even if you have to start with group connections. Do you have Mummy issues? Great! Connect with women who do not use you to feed their mother wounds because they have healed or have never experienced the trauma.
Share your beauty: hoarding is what we do when we are poor and are afraid what we have will not be enough. Yes, sharing takes away from us, but it is in sharing that we invite others to our world permitting them to share their beauty that we do not know we need.