This season has been inviting me to pay attention to practices that help me remember what is true for me during times of dormancy and uncertainty. I have been noticing how disappointment, weariness, anxiety, and grief (to name just a few difficult emotions) can feel like they’re the only reality. In the times we’re living in, life feels hard, and it feels like it will always be hard.
This is why glimmers are so important to me. They are little sparkles of laughter or delight or even just quiet pleasure that remind me the struggles aren’t all there is.
Another phrase shimmered at me last week—senseless acts of beauty.
Beauty is a necessary part of our human experience. One of my favourite authors, John O’Donohue writes in The Invisible Embrace of Beauty, “There are times when life seems little more than a matter of struggle and endurance, when difficulty and disappointment form a crust around the heart. Because it can be deeply hurt, the heart hardens … Yet though the music of the heart may grow faint, there is in each of us an unprotected place that beauty can always reach out and touch. It was Blaise Pascal who said: In difficult times you should always carry something beautiful in your mind.”
I love the idea of always carrying something beautiful in my mind.
Something is beckoning me a little further, a few steps beyond just noticing beauty.
“Commit senseless acts of beauty.”
Commit … This speaks to me of intentionality. This is something I do on purpose. I plan for it. I make space for it, both in my activities and in my attention. I make it happen.
Senseless … I love the contrast between this word and the one before it. This speaks to me of playfulness, of non-productivity, of whimsy, of fun. When life is difficult, I need to be deliberate and intentional about being playful. Like most truths, it sounds like a paradox. Intentional fun … how does that work? For me, it has to do with actively scheduling activities that have nothing to do with productivity, choosing to take a break from my to-do list to stare out the window and let my mind wander, taking time to colour a picture or do a puzzle or play with fabric in my sewing room. This is why my Friday or Saturday social media posts are often something ridiculous or funny.
Acts of Beauty … I love the idea that my actions can bring beauty into the world, that I can initiate beauty. Because these acts are also “senseless”, they don’t have to be anything that anyone else would identify as beautiful. Arranging coloured stones on a plate, laying out a rarely used cloth on our dining table, displaying our family’s collection of Christmas Lego projects on the mantel … all of them just little bits of joy, small acts of beauty that are meaningful to me.
To someone else, the activities I mention might sound like clutter or boredom, and that’s okay. The whole point of senseless acts of beauty is that they don’t have to appeal to anyone but the person doing them. When I give my attention to what brings light and comfort to my own soul, I’m adding to the overall light in the world at large. When I give myself permission to engage with beauty and delight and playfulness, even for brief moments, that lightness invites others to do the same.
Engaging with “senseless” acts of beauty also takes the pressure of what I’m doing to meet any kind of external standard. If what I’m doing is for no purpose other than my own enjoyment, then it doesn’t have to be artistically appealing, colour coordinated or technically skillful. It is something I do for the sake of doing it, not for the results.
What is one senseless act of beauty that invites your participation? Where can you add a moment of whimsy to your day or your workspace or your home? How can we, together, add just a little more light to our world?
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