Finding Beauty in Unexpected Places: Telling A Better Story

I've trying writing this entry so many ways over the past few weeks. I wanted it to be something much more elaborate and profound. But I usually ended up deleting the post and putting up a picture of the dog instead. So this is the cliffs notes version of what I've been thinking about lately. My hope is that as this project develops, I'll be better able to articulate everything I'm thinking about. But this is me, starting small.

Finishing up this last dissertation chapter was a more emotional experience than I had anticipated. It was the seed of my dissertation, it challenged me in ways I could have never anticipated, and it made me realize just how much I had grown in the past year.

At the same time, I've recently discovered Karen Waldron's blog chookooloonks. Waldron is committed to seeking out beauty in the everyday. When January rolled around, she explained that instead of making a resolution, she was interested honing in on and developing her superpowers. She even started a discussion forum to encourage her readers to take the same approach (the forum, however, got abandoned as she finished her manuscript, and she hasn't picked it up since; I'm hoping that changes soon). I was immediately sold on her approach and wanted to develop my own superpower. It sounded like a great way to play off one's strengths in order to achieve positive transformations. It also sounded like the kind of project that would serve me well as I face the transitions and challenges of the next year.

The first thing I had to do was name my superpower. As I thought about my dissertation, my teaching, my writing, and the things I loved to do, I realized that what I want to do (and what I believe I have the potential to do) is to tell a better story. I want to take the things that are "broken" or "ugly" in the world and talk about how literature and the arts can help us change our perspective on them. I want to seek out beauty in those stories we might consider tragic, unjust, or even mundane, and by doing so, change the narrative.

I'm not saying that I'm excel at this superpower at the moment. I know it is something I need to work at developing. I know I don't always acknowledge the beauty in my own life. I've always been a worrier, and a lifetime of fretting has made me more skeptical than appreciative of most things. So this is why I'm spending the next month looking for unexpected beauty. I'm hoping to start training my brain to look for incredible gifts that surround us daily. I want to make a habit of noticing beauty.

Some of you will have already caught on to this fact, but much of my phrasing is stolen from Sara Grove's song "Add to the Beauty." This is my favorite of Groves's songs. I draw a lot of inspiration from these lyrics and feel like it applies to many aspects of my life. (In fact, the whole of her Add to the Beauty CD speaks to me in really profound ways.) So if you are interested, here is Groves playing this song in concert. This footage is from the Nomad documentary, I Just Showed Up For My Own Life, which features Groves and her experiences in post-Katrina Louisiana and Rwanda.



I'll do my best to take you along on this journey. One thing I forgot to mention is that I welcome you to post your moments of unexpected beauty in the the comments section of these posts. Maybe we can all start helping each other to see our lives with new eyes.