Moments of beauty
They're everywhere
Years ago, in grad school, I did a “personal values card sort” exercise. It comes from psychological researchers who created a form of therapy called Motivational Interviewing.
During the card sort, you organize virtues into categories — those important to you and those not important to you. Then you go through several winnowings of the cards into smaller and smaller categories until you arrive at your top five personal values and finally … the single most important value that guides your life.
(Here's an online interactive version of the card sort that you can do yourself — it’s fun! And here is the original version, if you want to print it out to make your own set of the 85 personal value cards.)
Since becoming a psychotherapist, I’ve used this exercise with many of my clients. It’s particularly helpful for young adults who are just starting to recognize and shape their values. Often they’re surprised to see what ends up in that No. 1 slot.
I was surprised, too. I thought my top value was going to be one of the things I already know are important to me — something like “love” or “mindfulness” or “kindness.”
My top value in the card sort? Beauty.
At first, that seemed shallow. Beauty?! My central value in life is beauty? I was dismayed.
Then I realized it made sense. Because my definition of beauty is quite broad. It includes physical beauty, yes: an ocean sunset, the sinuous melody of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, the wide-open, curious eyes of a child.
But beauty, in my world, is also anything that moves me emotionally. Anything that jolts me into present-moment awareness and reminds me, with an electric buzz, that I’m alive. I am here. I can see and smell and hear and taste and feel the world. It’s in the palm of my hand. It’s in the beating of my heart. The in-and-out flow of my breath.
It’s the tiny fern growing inside an old bottle half-buried in mud. Yes! Beauty presented herself to me while I was collecting roadside litter.
Just last night, beauty was the whisper of a breeze that came through the open window next to my bed and woke me. I felt it stroking my cheek in the darkness. I heard the trees sighing outside.
For years now, I’ve kept a “One Beautiful Thing a Day” notebook. Each evening, I write down one thing I’ve experienced that day that I would call “beautiful,” in the broadest sense of the word. It’s not an essay, just a few brief words of description. I have other spiritual practices that sustain me, but this is the one I can rely on to guide me toward wholeness. It’s a faithful friend who leads me by the hand.
In doing this every day for more than a decade now, I’ve noticed several things:
I am always on the lookout for the day’s One Beautiful Thing. Which keeps me in a healthy frame of mind. I notice lovely things, surprising things, uplifting things, no matter how small. My world becomes filled — intentionally filled — with amazements.
When I get overwhelmed by the ugliness and suffering all around us, this One Beautiful Thing exercise saves me, again and again. It reminds me that despite everything, beauty persists. It’s not as loud as the ugliness, but it’s there.
Sometimes the One Beautiful Thing is a human-made kindness — something someone said or did that touched my heart. But the vast majority of my One Beautiful Things are of the natural world. And this is maybe the primary reason I decided to specialize in nature therapy: I have years and years worth of evidence, in those little notebooks, that the natural world offers us endless joys.
One other part of the exercise: Each morning, I look at today’s date in last year’s One Beautiful Thing notebook. Invariably, I read about some small thing from 365 days ago that I’d totally forgotten. And then it washes over me, for the millionth time: Blessings abound in our lives. All we have to do is pay attention.
To close, here’s a photo from last winter. It was Christmas Day, cold enough for snow but … no snow. I felt a bit sad about that. Then something amazing happened. We went for a walk in the woods — and found a breathtaking gift.
That look on my face? It says, “I just found today’s One Beautiful Thing.”
May you, dear readers, find moments of beauty in your world, wherever you are. And may those moments gladden your heart, over and over.
This definition of beauty really helps me. I’ve known my words are intimacy and beauty - also the two things I struggle most to open to - but this definition of beauty adds so much clarity. I meant to start doing this the last time you wrote about it, hopefully this time I actually will!
OMG. So helpful. I'm totally going to do this.