Well, it’s ultimately up to you to decide what that is for you…BUT also…
The Big Three. Philosophically speaking. Nah, I don’t feel like philosophically speaking. Maybe another day.
Simply, it occurred to me that the majority of what we see out in our popularized, media-ized world is generally of two flavors. There are of course exceptions and gradients, but the predominate flavors are fucked up and flawless. Think ISIS and advertising. War and luxury. Political ads and models. The Gallagher’s of Shameless and The Crawley’s of Downton Abbey or a little bit of both extremes in the Kardashians. Children sleeping on the streets and a get rich/happy/hot quick scheme. One is the worst of the worst of reality and one is some seemingly amazing yet fake and mostly unrealistic carrot dangled in front of our faces. Even the more everyday stuff feels polished and tidied and largely not real.
No wonder anxiety and sorrow are rampant in this world. There’s fear on both sides of this barrage. Fear that we might find ourselves or those we love in the worst circumstances of humanity, mass death, destruction, and depravity or that we might not live up to the glitz, glamour, and perfection that is mostly a figment of some creative imagination aimed to sell us stuff.
What I’d say we don’t see enough of is what life actually looks like most of the time for most people. Moments of simple beauty. The mundane everyday stuff that fills much of our lives. The smelly, unsightly, un-photoshopped world that all of us live in. The moments in which we just don’t show up the way we wanted, we know it, and we have no fucking clue how to change it. The sorrows and struggles that touch us all, moment to moment.
And the freaky fantastic fun of it all. Seeing our kids talking to themselves. Singing made up songs to our snoring dogs. Watching our loved ones flail and loving them anyway. The morning sun filtering in our window and the elation of dropping into bed after a long day. Looking at great art. The trees changing. Feeling the summer sun on our face. Or the anger at the fact that life just sucked today.
All of that, to me, is Truly Good Beauty. The sacred everyday. And in showing up as Unabashedly Me, giving of myself and the way I see things, and curating some goodness from others, that’s what I’m hoping to bring a tiny bit more of to the table, to my corner of the world.
Sometimes, through my writing, I may seem powerful and sunny and impactful and fierce. Other times I may look sad and fearful and confused. I will wonder if you’ll like it. And, I will publish it anyway. I’m committed to bringing it all.
It’s really all I know to do to express the tenderness and profundity of my life, and to hopefully, in that process, serve others and encourage them to be true and real expressions of themselves, whoever they are in a given moment, and whatever they are facing, whether lovely or devastating.