BEAUTY IS NOT OPTIONAL

My colleague asked me recently about my motto, and this is what I replied:

It’s a motto I thought I came up with but I think someone clever said something like it first.

I have long ago learned than I cannot just survive or accept being reduced to a number or a cog, although as you so eloquently outlined in your response, this is the pressure on all of us in the ER in Quebec, and elsewhere too. But I need to hear the story or meet the person behind the pathology. If I have a need, I try and find something in it that I also love. It is the mark of great design; function and beauty. It is the only thing that I am sure that I am good at; being an admirer of beauty. It is why I am an avid member of Montreal's Fine art gallery, buy paintings from friends, travel and photograph whenever I can, admire people’s strengths and try and forget their faults, write, weed, paint, and decorate.

It’s a reason to exist, struggle, and live despite the stress and failure and regret. It keeps me from only judging (a personality trait I fight against), and keeps me sane (or at least keeps me closer than I would be otherwise!😂)

From environmentalist Terry Tempest Williams:

"When we were working in the village of Rugerero with Rwandan women who had lost everything from war, I saw a light in their eyes return when their children began picking up paintbrushes and painting the walls of their homes. Joy entered in. Creativity ignited a spark. In that moment, I saw that art is not peripheral, beauty is not optional, but a strategy for survival.

In Rwanda, USAID was saying, "How can you dare to paint a village when people are hungry?" But beauty feeds a different kind of hunger. And when there's so much ugliness in the world that we've created, I think it's essential, that whether it's pausing in a garden with a trowel in hand, or walking up to Delicate Arch in Arches National Park, or picking up a paintbrush with children, our soul seizes beauty and is sustained.

Finding beauty in a broken world is acknowledging that beauty leads us to our deepest and highest selves. It inspires us. We have an innate desire for grace. It's not that all our definitions of beauty are the same, but when you see a particular heron in the bend in the river, day after day, something in your soul stirs. We remember what it means to be human."

From Lord Byron:

So the next time you feel stressed, choose to create or admire or do something beautiful. Make it beauty for yourself, or someone else. Don't just do something minimally. Elevate it to art, whether it is a conversation, a gift, a need, or a desire. If you can't create it, find a forest, and bathe in its beauty. You and the world around you will be better for it.