Beauty in the cracks
On the need to "see"
In the somewhat goofy (but fun) film - “Love Actually” - Billy Mack sings “Christmas is all around us”. On a recent trip to Italy, I observed that beauty is all around us, even in the cracks. Beauty is all around us, also in the places we least expect to find it. We must look for it. And we must recognise it. We must see it. Otherwise it goes unnoticed.
Bonhoeffer wrote:
“Contempt for the world turns into bondage for the world: on the basis of contempt for the world, one renounces changing the world and thus sustains it as it is”, (statement found on notepaper in his Tegel prison cell, in ‘Letters from Prison’, p39).
This points us to the notion that hatred and aversion, whilst appearing to change the world, in fact only serve to sustain it and its fundamental flaws, even though the form might appear outwardly different. Evidently, we might argue that some ‘forms’ are more liveable than others, and I would not argue with that, but could the deeper truth be that only love is truly transformative? On a large scale, perhaps we will never know. But locally, in the particular, yes, we can try.
Love, like beauty, must, I believe, first be seen, noticed and acknowledged. It must be recognised as such. We are creatures of habit and conditioning, and right now we are conditioned to see nothing but tragedy, war and hopelessness. If that is all we are looking for, that is all we will see.
Axel Honneth wrote about recognition. He speaks of “the vulnerability of humans resulting from the internal independence of individualization and recognition” and “the experience of being disrespected [that] carries with it the danger of an injury that can bring the identity of the person as a whole to the point of collapse,” (1995, p.131-132).
I wonder if beauty and love are also brought to the point of collapse when we do not recognise them or if we disrespect them? If disrespect is a failure of recognition, then beauty and love must need to be acknowledged. In “The Drowned and the Saved”, Primo Levi speaks of the need to be witnessed. Levi suggests that the pain of not being heard, of being left without a witness, can be as deep — or even deeper — than the original violence. Because it erases the personhood, the meaning, the moral reality of the experience.
Part of our conditioning might be to disregard the ordinary as a vessel of beauty. We embark on quest after quest to discover beauty in the exotic and the afar; but what if it was right here at home? I liken it to the growing trend to seek enlightenment through indigenous medicines, like ayahuasca. The allure is that the experience will allow the seeker to ‘see’ something special; to experience deeper insights into self and (m)other- nature. But we don’t necessarily need indigenous plants to help us accomplish this goal.
The notion of seeing is crucial. The Noble Eightfold Path starts with Right View, which implies seeing clearly, without distortion, ignorance or craving. Jesus also bids us to keep our eyes open and to ‘stay awake’ and in Matthew 13: 13 & 16, he says:
“Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.”
[...]
“But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.”
— Matthew 13:13,16
I have just finished reading the book “Blindness” by José Saramago, one of my favourite authors. The book recounts a time when, one by one, citizens of the city, then the country and then the whole world, go blind. They are struck by a white blindness: nothing can be seen and everything turns white. Only one person retains the gift of sight: the wife of the doctor (ophthalmologist).
The doctor’s wife is the only person who can see how deep those who cannot see descend into depravity, evil and inhumanity. In the beginning there is some sense of order, as the first people to go blind are quarantined in an old mental asylum. The first small group of people manage to figure out a system of cohabitation and of sharing, but as more and more blind people enter the asylum, it turns into mayhem.
The broken down sewerage system means that things start to smell; and as nobody is looking (everybody is blind) and everything is broken anyway, people stop going to the bathrooms for their toilet needs. Then power and greed take over; human needs must be satisfied and those with the most strength (and a pistol) start to run the show.
Throughout the book Saramago comments on humanity; on how we cope or fail to cope in certain situations; on how some will always take advantage of others; of man’s need for accountability; and how the good life depends on human beings ‘seeing’. But not everyone wants to ‘see’.
“Time is coming to an end, putrescence is spreading, diseases find the doors open, water is running out, food has become poison, that would be my first statement said the doctor’s wife. And the second, asked the girl with dark glasses, Let’s open our eyes, We can’t, we are blind, said the doctor, It is a great truth that says that the worst blind person was the one who did not want to see, But I do want to see, said the girl with dark glasses, That won’t be the reason you will see, the only difference would be that you would no longer be the worse blind person, and now, let’s go, there is nothing more to be seen here, the doctor said”, (p.281-2).
Blindness is a form of abandonment, of self and of the other.
“In the girl’s room on the chest of drawers stood the glass vase with the withered flowers, the water had evaporated, it was there that her blind hands directed themselves, her fingers brushed against the dead petals, how fragile life is when it is abandoned”, (p.234).
Levinas speaks of the ‘gaze’: the notion that when we look into another pair of eyes, when we truly gaze at the face of another, we feel a moral responsibility towards them. Might this be why we avert our gazes from the homeless, the poor, the dishevilled, preferring to cross the street rather than ‘see’ the suffering? An ‘abandoned life’ is an unseen life. It is a life to which nobody has borne witness; nobody has stepped in to levy responsibility for the other.
Noticing beauty is not to disregard the suffering. Noticing the good is not to discount the evil. How many are blind in today’s society – refusing not to see what is right in front of their eyes? Be it the suffering. Or a spider’s web glistening amongst the grass? Or the flowers growing in the broken pavement?
Beauty is here. There and Everywhere.
In soul-making dharma we practice seeing the other with loving presence. It means that whilst another person is sharing, we listen deeply and at the same time allow ourselves to see something in them which is beautiful, kind and good. We look intentionally with a full loving presence. And we always manage to see something. Beauty in the gaps between the words; in the pause; a slight smile before the next breath, carried in the cracks and wounds.
Presently we are feeling the consequences of a world which fails to see and acknowledge the beauty in the ordinary (other); the beauty of imperfection; beauty at the edge. We live in a world which glorifies excess, mistaking it for the good. A celebrity wedding taking place in Venice, costing over 40 million dollars, whilst children starve in Gaza waiting in line for a bag of flour. Most would rather look the other way, instead of seeing what needs to be seen.
There is an exercise in Insight Dialogue where you take an ordinary object, something close to hand. And sit with it. Study it. Look closely at it. See its form, colours, texture. Ask yourself how many hands have held this object before it came to you. Where did the raw materials come from? Who has been involved in its ‘production’, from start to finish, making it possible for it to be on your desk or table? What do you use it for? Where will it go when you dispose of it? It and its material components have likely passed through many hands. Each with their own story, scars, fragilities and strengths. Each with beauty and suffering. And now it is with you.
In the face of overwhelm, fear, anger, jealousy, look around you, at all the beauty in the ordinary. Beauty refuses to die. Look at the sky. The grass. Examine a rose or a tulip or a ‘weed’. See what is peering at you through the cracks in the pavement or wall. You might be surprised. And grateful. Allow yourself to see.
Because beauty is here. There and Everywhere.
Such a thought provocative read, in fact have read twice. My own life in Italy gives me many more opportunites to do eactly that....to stop and to appreciate. thank you for writing..
Yes. The beauty in and of the quotidian- when did we stop to notice and why don’t we stop to smell the roses. I remind my grand children whenever we are together- we stop and smell the roses and we really don’t care if anyone is watching … thank you Kim 🙏🏼