Reclaiming Beauty in an Ugly World
Beauty. We treat it like a pretty trinket, some delicate thing easily broken, best kept on a high shelf, and left for vacation or retreat after we’ve handled the real business of survival. In Western capitalism, beauty is contained as an industry of adornment.
But we’ve been duped, and maybe we’ve duped ourselves.
No, my friends, beauty is not a novelty. It’s not some fragile, frivolous thing. Beauty is fierce. Beauty is necessary. Beauty is sustenance. And in this anxious, broken, battered world, beauty may be our best antidote to what ails us; a somatic and soul salve when we feel pain.
In an ugly, fractured world, beauty is a form of resistance. Beauty revives what is real, to the truth of things beyond the superficial or benign. Beauty is all around us. We can find it not only in art, nature, and music but also in the depth of human presence and the grace of everyday life, even in our work.
Look around—what do you see?
Downcast faces pinned to mobile screens—fierce rivals sling insults and threats at neighbors and fellow human citizens. A society living with a dull, aching hum like a low, relentless headache, stumbling through our days carrying stress, disconnection, and anxiety. Headlines raging with fear to seduce our attention.
We’ve buried beauty under shiny glass screens, under the in-fighting of our politics, under concrete and steel, in the name of productivity, efficiency, and all the hollow altars we worship now.
We walk through ugliness every day, and we pretend it doesn’t touch or affect us. But it does. It seeps into our bones, makes us numb, robs us of something vital. We lose our way in these soulless spaces. We lose our Self.
And yet, when it finds us, beauty is like a lightning bolt to the heart and soul. It doesn’t ask permission. It doesn’t wait for an invitation. Beauty crashes in, unbidden, and for a moment—a heartbeat, a breath—we remember.
Beauty reminds us what it’s like to be alive, to be awake, to be arrested in the tremor of awe. It might be a single note hanging in the air, a fragment of music that splits you open, a stranger’s kind act, the smile of a loved one, the support of a colleague, or the way the last light hits the edge of a rooftop and turns the horizon to gold.
Beauty stops you cold, makes time hold its breath in your breath. And in that pause, everything changes, including you.
We’ve forgotten how to love the world because we no longer truly see it or each other. We treat our natural world like it’s something broken, something to fix, dominate, or use up.
We talk about resources, carbon footprints, and crises—but beneath all that, the world is alive, waiting for us to notice, witness, and remember where we truly belong.
This isn’t just about saving the earth or the ills of society. It’s about saving ourselves.
My wish for us is this.
May we pause to recognize the beauty of what’s hidden in plain sight as a welcoming and healing place to remember our deepest Self.
May we break through othering by seeing the stories, pains, and desires of our colleagues, neighbors, and fellow citizens; may they see our’s, too.
May we, as leaders, entrepreneurs, makers, and modern elders (for those that align with this title), be the light that shines beauty on the world.
(This article was originally published on Wisdom Well, the publication for Modern Elder Academy (MEA) and Chip Conley)
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