Fresh Eyes

The title of my blog is Fresh Eyes – and that title represents an inner transformation, one that I believe can happen to anyone, any time.

Somewhere in the early 2010’s I found myself pondering the state of things in the world, as I often do, and wondering why there is so much distrust and conflict. I settled on the ideas related to personal bias, limited exposure to other cultures, lack of curiosity, fear of the ‘other’, and how those factors are overtly or covertly reinforced by our selected or default context – where we live, our social circles, who influences us, what institutions we belong to, what work we do, what education we have, etc.

I was sitting in Heathrow. Waiting for a flight. I was surrounded by lights, sounds, people, and storefronts and their attendants attempting to lure us itinerants into buying something. Expensive somethings. Like the latest fashions, jewelry, limited editions of all sorts of things…

One storefront in front of me was a fashion house, and, in addition to the skeletal mannequins wearing things, there were large, vibrant video displays of very young and very thin models posing in various exotic locations. None of them were smiling. I don’t think smiling was preferred at the time.

In any case, I realized that I was meant to think of these models as ‘beautiful’. I was meant to want to look like them – hell, maybe even be them. Carefree, yet sullen-faced, rail thin and tan, lounging, emerging, twirling and posing on exotic beaches, in busy spaces, in workplaces.

I grew angry.

I’ve known quite a few people personally who have struggled with self-image, and some who have done harm to their own bodies because of this felt need to achieve such ridiculous physicalities in order to be accepted, loved, respected, included.

So. I whipped out my phone and posted to my favorite (at the time) social media platform, tagging the fashion house and asking them to please stop bombarding us with such unhealthy imagery, and I included a photo of the displays.

No. Nothing came of that, other than my own brief moment of agency.

However, I did start thinking, then, about revolutionizing my own mind around the concept of beauty. For, if it weren’t what I was objecting to in the airport concourse, what IS beauty? What is it for me? What could it be??

That was a bit of an epiphany for me. Sure, I’d always been consciously in the camp of broad acceptance of human bodies. But I don’t think I’d ever stopped to then define what beauty – human beauty specifically – was to me.

I would now invite the reader to think of your own experience with things and thoughts similar to the above. And to ask yourself – what is humanly beautiful, beyond the body?

So I started noticing. I walked differently. I thought differently. I was on a quiet quest. It was a daily quest, for quite some time! It felt good. Why?

Because: I suddenly started noticing the mundane but deeply human interactions in everyday life, and, in my mind, seeing them with fresh eyes – seeing them as beautiful.

• The grocery store checkout person, smiling briefly and showing patience with a slow customer
• A person held a door for someone else.
• Someone cleaning the office took care around the photos on someone’s desk.
• A man held a child’s hand.
• Someone took great care with their hair, adding many many beads.
• A server at a restaurant wiped the table – and dried it.

Sure, some of the examples are just regular, daily things that people might be expected to do. But that’s okay. In fact, that’s great. As I saw those gestures and small acts as ‘beautiful’, I saw those people differently. I saw them as beautiful.

There was beauty everywhere. I just had to see it.

The consequence of this was that I was happier. I felt more empathy, more connection to people. I felt less judgmental.

Today, I’m struggling to regain that perspective. I want to. I want to see people as beautiful. But the realities of what is happening in the US, in my state, and in my town make it so, so hard.