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Focus on What You Love.  photo credit: Thomas Lloyd Qualls I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again: Your job is to find beauty.
Yes, your life is messy. Yes, your job is stressful. Yes, your romantic partnership is hanging by a thread. Yes, traffic sucks. Yes, your children won’t listen. Or stop talking back. Or stop crying. Or stop leaving Legos and bouncy balls in the middle of the kitchen floor where you’ll step on them in the dark and damn near kill yourself. Or them. Yes, the laundry is overflowing. Yes, you forgot to water your plants. Again. Yes, you blew the deadline. Yes, it will be another year before you can apply again. Yes, the thing you wanted more than anything in the whole universe didn’t happen. Or at least it didn’t happen to you. Yes, on top of your personal crazy world of red lights, tax forms, relationship disasters, and impossible financial obligations, all over the world people are doing terrible things to other people. And to animals. And to the planet. Which, as it turns out, is the same thing as doing those things to people and animals. But believe it or not, there is something you can do about it: Buy art. If you don’t believe me, just listen to Picasso, he knows: Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. - Picasso Sure, you say. I’ll just forget about all the world’s troubles, and my own, stick my head in the sand mandala, and hide. Well, okay. That’s better than a hundred other things you could do. But I don’t see it as just hiding. I see it as one of the more powerful things you can do to change the world. What the hell am I talking about? I’ll tell you what. Actually, I’ll let Anaïs Nin tell you, because she said it quite nicely: We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are. What I mean, in case you’re still scratching your head, is that your life is the sum total of all the things you focus on in a day. Which is why I keep saying your job is to find beauty. Which means your job is also to buy that piece of art that embodies the beauty you seek. Unless, of course, you want the terrorists to win. Then just sit at home and look at your blank walls, worrying about that missed deadline and your lover who won’t call. Still not convinced? Here’s a few more reasons: It’s empowering. You see something you like. Something that makes you smile. Something that lights up something somewhere near your chest area, your brain area, or maybe even your loins. You have either some money in the bank, your pockets, or on a credit card. You make an executive decision to use that money to buy that thing that makes you smile. And BAM, you own it. Just like that. You get to take it home and put it up any damn place you like. Artists could use the cash. Seriously. Artists live by the mantra of not just finding beauty but creating it. And they generally make less money than school teachers. Sometimes a lot less. If you want the world to be better, it starts with finding beauty, and it flows from there to helping its creator pay the rent. Support what you love. There are many things to be upset about, many things to rail against, to protest, and to fight. And many of those fights are noble. And it is a far more powerful act to find out what you love and support it. That is the best way I know to make the world a better place. It’s an affirmation of abundance. When you buy art, you’re telling the universe a thing or two. Including that you are confident of your place in it, and that you are worthy of its beauty. You are casting a vote for what’s important. And you are doing something to counter the message of the mass-produced goods culture that surrounds you. It has a story. I don’t know about you, but I want the things I have to have a story. Not to be cold, machine-produced duplicates. To have a life of their own. We all have stories to tell. Countless stories, in truth. And that’s exactly what art does. No matter what kind of art it is. It tells stories. What comes around goes around. When you start focusing on beauty. When you invest in it, feed it, and nurture it. Then something magical starts to happen. It brings its friends. And more and more beauty just starts showing up at your door, in your car, on a walk, or at work. Maybe even in bed. So go ahead. Buy some art. You’ll be happy. And the world will be happier, too. **** This is one of 66 essays in the Gold Nautilus Award winning collection, Happiness Is an Imaginary Line in the Sand. The book is available here: https://bit.ly/40s3Gh0
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Your Happiness Depends Upon How You Are Looking.  Photo Credit: Thomas Lloyd Qualls Just stop it, already. You know what I’m talking about. You, telling that same old story about how impossible things are, how unfair. The story of how the whole world is rigged, and not in your favor. The story of inequality, injustice, oppression, corruption, lies. The story of why it is understandable that you are where you are. I’ve said it before, this world is imperfect. In fact, in many ways, it’s down right broken. But that doesn’t mean it’s not also beautiful. Your job is not to fix all the problems. Your job is not even to point them out or to explain them. Your job is to find beauty. Because it is out there. And it is in here. It is everywhere you look. And it is everywhere you don’t look. When our eyes are graced with wonder, the world reveals its wonders to us. There are people who see only dullness in the world and that is because their eyes have already been dulled. So much depends on how we look at things. The quality of our looking determines what we come to see. -John O’Donohue Practice what you preach. Better yet, stop preaching. And just be. No one wants to listen to preaching anyway. At least not for very long. And not over and over again. Even if they agree with you. If you find you are well suited to repairing a small piece of the world that is broken, then by all means, go ahead. We need your services. We need fixers and healers of all shapes and sizes and colors. But just in case I wasn’t clear, I’ll say it again. Your job is to find beauty. Your job is to seek it out, acknowledge it, share it, nurture it, photograph it, paint it, sculpt it, write about it, draw its name in the sand, scatter its petals over the ocean, light up the night sky with its fire. As an artist, your job is also to create beauty. To be it. That is the birthright of each and every one of us. To acknowledge our own beauty. To become it. To look beneath the surface, to brush away the dust, to shake out the rugs. We have stacked so much rubbish on top of ourselves, that our true beauty, and the beauty of everyone and everything are buried under our prejudices, our beliefs, our pages and pages of worn out stories. Dig yourself out. Brush yourself off. Throw away the never-ending manuscript of why you can’t. The world is neither this thing nor that thing. It is not our ideas of how it is or of how it should be. The world is the world. Like love, the world contains all possibilities. All darks and lights, all ups and downs, all rainbows of doubt and joy, hardship and pleasure. But I want you to forget all that. Your job is to find beauty. * * * * This is an excerpt from "Your Job Is to Find Beauty" - one of 66 essays in the Gold Nautilus Award winning collection, Happiness Is an Imaginary Line in the Sand. The book is available here: https://bit.ly/40s3Gh0 Subscribe to Substack for more fun with words: https://thomaslloydqualls.substack.com/ |
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