Gifts for crisis and challenge

The Gift of BEAUTY

I’m finding myself on an emotional rollercoaster, bad days and good days, positive energy followed by hopelessness, anxiety followed by calm. Unpredictable – “changeable as the weather” as my mother would say. Maybe this sounds very familiar to you too? These are challenging times, and we are not meant to be managing them in a state of Zen-like serenity (at least, not unless we have access to some powerful and possibly illegal substances to create that state). We are all working hard to survive, without a clear idea of what sort of future we are surviving for. What kind of world will emerge from lockdown? What will be left of our former lifestyle, our work, our finances and our health?

I’ve lived with these questions for most of the last year – what would my life and my health be like after all the treatment was done, after surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy had done their worst to my body, in the hope of optimising my survival chances, but with a cost in terms of ongoing limitations through side effects, and an inability to escape the reality of my own mortality. I am still working with these experiences in my own therapy, knowing I am changed, trying to understand what it all means, trying to get used to my personal “new normal”. My brain, and indeed my whole being, can frequently become overwhelmed with fear, despair and grief, and I feel lost, uncertain, pessimistic, with a sense of impending doom.

This is what human brains are wired for – the expectation of disaster, readiness to defend ourselves against attack, watchful, wary, vigilant. Our bodies are built to withstand expected periods of scarcity and even starvation – ironically it is these very starvation survival systems that we now know are contributing to obesity and diabetes in our modern life where for most of us in the West, food of all kinds is available without restriction. It worked for our cave dwelling ancestors – the “Netflix and chill” attitude would have led to our extinction – space for meditation, creativity and stillness would have been only possible in the rare circumstances when physical safety and protection could be ensured. Parts of our brain have not been updated since then, so we are naturally going to pay more attention to things that might scare or threaten us, seeking out more information about the scary thing, feeding on news, social media, and those ongoing conversations that focus on how scared we should be, and how watchful we need to remain at all times.

Building resilience is not about building “strength” that will prevent us from feeling our reactions to events, or developing defences that can force us to keep going and tough it out under pressure. Resilience is about “bounce back”. Remember that advert where a red rubber ball was squished so that it got a wrinkly and then sprang back into its smooth spherical shape when it was let go ( because it had applied some sort of anti-ageing miracle cream no doubt)? We need ways to recover from stresses in our lives, never more so than in our present scary days.

In the psychological sense, resilience is about finding ways to be with ourselves as we experience our fear, grief, anger, confusion, loss, despair and even our physical frailty, unwellness and mortality, where we can get squished, crushed, even collapsed at times, but can also recover and come back to ourselves as well. Come back to our centre, to our breathing, to that beautiful indwelling well of stillness, our spark of creative soul fire.

Beauty takes us away from threat.

Beauty brings us home to ourselves.

Beauty reminds us who we truly are.

There’s evidence from neuroscience that our brains do literally shift away from our threat-defence system into a more soothed and regulated state when we engage with beauty, seeking it and finding it wherever it lifts our heart. We have to do some conscious and deliberate work in stressful times to come back to seeking beauty, but it works.

GO DEEP (Personal reflection)

What lifts your heart?

What makes you catch your breath, gasp with delight, drop your jaw in surprise and pleasure?
What makes your eyes open wide, makes you tell others to “hush” so you can take it in better?

What transports you into a state of delighted contentment, gives you a sense of privilege having seen it or heard it (how lucky)?

Each of us has our own particular preference for what floats our beauty boat. For some it is mostly visual – art work, colours, scenery, loved ones, sculpture, dance, movement. For others it is mostly auditory – music, poetry, birdsong, crashing waves, heavy rain on a window when you are warm and safe indoors. Or maybe the smell of bread baking, coffee brewing, a fragrant curry, or the taste of herbs, fresh salad leaves from the garden, a good wine. More than simple enjoyment, beauty lifts the heart, shifts our energy, changes our body language, and alters our thinking patterns.

My main “beauty food” is nature – true for many of us, I think. As a solitary, shy child, I spent hours playing on my own in the garden, gathering leaves and petals, fascinated by the differences between them, delighted by the sight of new shoots, making “ponds” (glorified puddles), bathing in the noises of the summer garden (for as long as I could stand it before the hay fever took over). My dad shared some of this connection to wildlife – his collection of pre-war books to accompany the BBC Radio series “Romany and Raq” filled my bedroom shelves, full of beautiful lino print illustrations of paw prints, owl pellets, and spoor – adding the extra benefit of shared pleasure to the witnessing of beauties large and small in the garden. I still remember vividly how he woke me up in the depths of the night to make sure that I saw the moonlit badger in the garden outside my window, and the awed glow I returned to bed with.

What are the family or relationship connections that enhance your enjoyment of the beauty that touches you?

GO WIDE (Create your own practice)

Each day, deliberately seek out something beautiful, whether in real life, in writing, photo or film, live music or birdsong or recordings.

Focus in on whatever you have chosen, allowing yourself to be touched, moved, blessed even, by this wonder.

Many religious philosophies encourage us to reconnect to the mind of the child – open, able to be awe-struck, to be drawn in fascination to the pattern on the leaf, the butterfly wing, the shadow of the railings. Allow yourself to “get young” again in your response to whatever beauty you find. Accept what you see/hear/experience without criticism and with curiosity, (the curiosity of a contented 4 year old is about right): “How did the butterfly make that pattern on its wings?”, “How do birds know what songs to sing?”, “How did the writer know to put those words together?”.

Recognise that this beauty is everywhere, waiting to be discovered. That beauty continues even in uncertain times, and our capacity to be lifted, moved, touched, and even healed by it, is also endless.

Breathe. Breathe in beauty, breathe in the abundance of beauty in the world. Fill yourself up with it.

Remember, the Buddhists tell us that the beauty we find outside ourselves is only a reflection of the true beauty that lies within us.

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Next time, another gift to explore together – GRATITUDE