September 15, 2024
Beauty. Still my word for this year, and a blessing!
Novelist Toni Morrison said: “I think beauty is an absolute necessity. I don’t think it’s a privilege or an indulgence, it’s not even a quest. I think it’s almost like knowledge, which is to say, it’s what we were born for. I think finding, incorporating and representing beauty is what humans do.…I don’t think we can do without it any more than we can do without dreams or oxygen.”
There is an old cliché: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Maybe it should say: “in the heart of the beholder.” Beauty is almost defined by a person’s response to it.
Years ago, we sat in Whistler, British Columbia, surrounded by breathtaking mountain scenery. A young woman in the group found out that we had visited some friends who have a cottage on the same road as her family’s summer place in Ontario.
She grew wistful. “That is the most beautiful place in the world.”
I hope my shock did not show. The place she mentioned was not lovely to me at all. But to her, it was beautiful family memories to cherish.
