What purpose does beauty serve?
Especially in this day and age, when we know about the suffering of so many people around the world — through wars, famine, climate disasters, and oppression…?

“One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, “What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?” ~ Rachel Carson

Well, I’ve discovered that it helps me to endure all the pain that I see and feel around me… in the news, in my own practice as a psychotherapist and couples and family therapist. In fact, I’m finding that it does more than help me to endure all that sadness and grief, anger and fear… It actually helps me to transmute that pain into compassion, allowing room for movement and expansion in my own heart — and, I hope, in the hearts of those whose lives I touch.

So it has become a practice that I’ve adopted for myself, as an antidote and a powerful medicine. It is a practice I now recommend to clients, friends, colleagues, and family members when they become disheartened.
This past week I was overcome by a grief so profound that it erupted from me like a giant wave of water moving up from my heart and out of my mouth, resulting very quickly in uncontrollable sobs and wailing… There was no physiological or psychological way to hold it in — this overwhelming, deep grief.

Part of it was the sadness and exhaustion I feel for all the innocent lives being lost… To be alive these days, you’d have to be dead inside to not feel this grief and exhaustion that so many of us share. Many people, in attempting to stay afloat in this ocean of sadness before it soaks us through to the bone with the images flooding in of the starving and injured, orphaned children… try to drown these collective sorrows with alcohol, or drugs, or some other numbing activity.

It’s understandable that we try to harden or disconnect from our overwhelming feelings of sadness and anxiety. It’s only human to sometimes succumb to depression and inertia. In order to breathe, some mobilise their rage, channelling it into positive activism… fuelled by this understanding of our shared humanity.
Whether you look at scientific data or feel a deep sense of being a part of a larger whole… there is no escaping the beating heart of our planet and all beings within it.

Mother Earth, as Indigenous cultures refer to our home, is one alive being, encompassing all beings. We all have a Life Force. More and more, we understand why Lakota people (from North and South Dakota in the US) sign messages with “All My Relations”, referring to all creatures and plants, humans, rocks. This living Earth is made up of all these beings who share our molecules…

The Navajos use a term, Hozho, or Walking in Beauty — a deep and respectful awareness of this aliveness that we share with the Earth.
To turn my attention to the beauty I’m able to find in everyday life — be it in images, sounds, tastes, or sensations — has been a balm to my heart.

Seeing that it helps me contribute to a positive life for those I work and live with, I’ve committed to my own variation on a practice of gratitude… I try to breathe, to slow down… It is a way of being present and of remembering that it is still a beautiful world.

“Seeing/finding beauty in the world around you is an important step in clearing the mind “ ~ Amit Ray

The photos above are some examples I noticed in the last few days, while thinking about the beauty that is still here…
All Photos by Catriona O’Curry