In Search of the Champagne Life
by Jennifer Barnick

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Too Busy For Beauty?

         Today I want to talk about a surely devalued power in the Universe: Beauty. Beauty today, as a term, has taken on many connotations from physical beauty to the beauty of a mountain stream to the weather. Often beauty in the common way or at least its reference is a little saccharine or cliché or even in some cases politically charged. Beauty for some is tyrannical and for others an obsession. Throughout all of our thinking and discomforts surrounding beauty and the idea of beauty the actual power and reality of beauty has been sadly left behind leaving a sort of weak substitute in its wake.

         The beauty that we so often hear of and are presented with is very often a beauty based entirely on the ego. Things are beautiful because they signal a special status. A car is beautiful solely because of the price and the collective agreement that anyone who can pay said price is better or more special in our community. Physical beauty is also completely wrapped up with ego. We collectively respond to traits that signal status of someone somehow being more special or better than another person. Even fine art and fine crafts have become exclusive products signaling to the rest of the population that this beauty the beauty of fine arts and crafts is only for the very few. And too often the people who posses these ego forms of beauty denounce the rest of the population as “tacky” or “unappreciative” and too often the ones who can gather their ego artifacts of beauty judge the ones who do not quite cruelly—claiming a sort of beauty sainthood over the mass consumer dogs playing poker captured on velvet, gnomes in front yard great unwashed.

         The reality is that beauty is a wondrous force of the universe. Beauty cannot only heal and inspire beauty can be incredibly functional and integral to the process of life and living. For many religions beauty is an attribute or force of god and for many philosophers beauty is truth a way in which humans can sense that something is good, sound, and wholesome. But surely this sort of beauty the beauty that nourishes not only the human spirit but also all of nature is not simply another tentacle of ego. True beauty is what made the polar bear’s ingenious hollow tubes for fur making them both perfectly warm and profoundly beautiful; true beauty is the cut gem-like glitter of the human iris that not only allows us to see outside but also inspires an admiration causing many to peer inside.

         It is not enough to simply say that what is referred to as “beauty” really is function—a great cosmic mistake that somehow came out as beautiful. Humans and animals know and respond to beauty and while certainly I make no claims as to having any kind of special metaphysical knowledge I do sense my own internal receptors for beauty and argue that if beauty were not an essential quality of life I would not have them.

         With the idea or theory that we and perhaps all life has internal receptors for beauty—a sort of inner need, response, and connection to beauty that beauty should indeed be encouraged and celebrated in our lives. If beauty were brought into the food we eat, the homes we live in and the way we choose to entertain ourselves I believe great universal functionality will return to our lives bringing a higher harmony, health, and vitality than just grabbing or doing “whatever”. To be align with the natural world is to live as our true selves. We are not egos we are humans that are just as much dependent and a part of the universe as Yosemite Falls or a starry night. The beauty of the universe is profound—yet too often man has lost sight of our own beauty and the substantive quality beauty has.

         I suppose it is my suggestion today that one reevaluates beauty in their lives. First to genuinely question the ego based beauty that only serves to deaden ones inner receptors for true nourishing beauty. Beauty in the highest sense serves not only all humanity but also the entire earth. It does not hold one as being better or more special above another and does not harm. Secondly, it is my suggestion to then try to weave beauty into ones life. It can mean preparing a meal that looks and smells amazing. It can mean thoroughly cleaning and de-cluttering a room then making it into a space of beauty or it can mean (and I believe this is one of the most potent ways to put beauty back into ones life) simply finding the beauty in every place you are—and I believe that when you can truly manage that you will find yourself strolling on the sweet shores of The Champagne Life.