Beauty

Is in the eye of the beholder.

Is an exclamation of joy—as in ‘Jesaulenko, you beauty!’.

Or perhaps is more akin to James Blunt jumping into the ocean over how beautiful you are?

Beauty matters, particularly in research and particularly these days in a pandemic.

The academic in me feels the need to quote a few papers here, show evidence that beauty matters, throw around a few scientist terms or name a philosopher or two to show that I’m not the only one who thinks this. But the poet in me refuses to engage in even the slightest suggestion that the importance of beauty must be proven.

It is self-evident.

Spend some time admiring a dramatic winter sky or a snow covered mountain or a red toadstool or a raindrop or the feeling of holding hands when in love, and try not to be improved by it.

Stand for just a moment and soak in the beauty that you didn’t create, that you did nothing to deserve, that presents itself to you each day, and try not to let your heart fill with gratefulness.

If you are not improved, if you don’t feel grateful, I wonder if you really took the beauty in at all. Receiving the benefits of beauty is, really, up to you. You open yourself to it or you don’t. And then you let it do it’s work on you.

Beauty in research matters.

We all grow tired of the study. One more academic reading, one more round of note taking, one more rewrite of a chapter that refuses to coalesce. On and on it goes. Over time we become weary and need refreshing.

Great! I hear you say with an edge in your voice. Let’s all take a holiday!

(For my non-Aussie readers, half of our country is in lockdown at the moment battling a fresh COVID outbreak meaning that none of us are going anywhere anytime soon. Back to the point…)

It’s time to notice the beauty right where you are.

Lame, I know.

Cliche? Yes. But what choice have you got?

The sun rises everyday and most days there is something to see.

And things grow, like this NSW Waratah I planted a couple of years ago. It is finally budding. Okay, maybe you don’t have a garden but someone will.

What about walking under an umbrella in the rain not listening to music? You become your own little universe right there, walking along, with the sound of rain on your temporary roof.

What good is all of this when there are papers to be read, data to be analysed and findings to write up?

Just for a moment you are free to be you.

No expectations.

Just you.