Cultivate beauty

Cultivate beauty

Have you ever noticed that whenever you bring fresh fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers into your home, they steal the scene? Everyone loves the beauty, the aroma, the connotation of care.

Farmers’ markets are a wonderful source of all this fresh produce, of course. But better and more satisfying still is growing your own goods in your own yard. It’s more local, less expensive and healthier: You soak up vitamin D from the sun, get some exercise and let your mind slip into a meditative state. And did I mention harvesting the actual fruits of your labor? That’s the sweetest thrill of all!

Don’t be mistaken – we didn’t always lead a healthy lifestyle! Like so many, our interest health and holistic living really kicked off when we faced health challenges of our own.

We grew up eating all the foods. Looking back, we had no real grasp of what eating healthy was…and bought into the low fat (high sugar) craze that dominated the 90’s and 2000’s. Calorie counting, packaged 100-cal snack foods, fun size Mars bars – you name it, we did it!

Of course, that wasn’t all.

We also followed the status quo and said “yes” to things that didn’t align with our values or who we are. This often led to stress and a deep sense of unease. At this time, we didn’t have a clue about how to reconnect with our inner selves through practices like meditation and mindfulness. It was a very unconscious way of living.

We keep telling ourselves that we should be flawless. When our lives falls short of our imaginary utopia, we get scared and lash out at ourselves and those we love. Our society worships perfection, photoshopping out wrinkles and bulges of our starving models. Defying gravity, we kick up the Botox and pump up the lips. The society pages are full of women who have that same deer in the headlights look that results from cranking your face up with a pulley.  

To cultivate beauty, cultivate Simplicity in character, in manners, in style; in all things To live a life of simplicity is to live life consciously.

To be aware of your direction, to be respectful of others, yet strong enough to go your own direction requires knowledge of oneself and the courage to step out on one’s own to understand who that self is capable of becoming.

And when things don’t work out as planned, it is the mature person who takes the lesson and moves forward, rather than remain pouting on the floor where they tumbled.

Simplicity requires you to not induce extra harm by blaming or whining, while doing so would complicate one’s life unnecessarily.

When we choose to do so for the betterment of society and the respect of others, we are revealing our level of moral development, thus our maturity. It is a choice to become mature, as simply being of an adult age doesn’t mean you are mature. Behaving in a mature manner requires great self-discipline, self-examination and a desire to understand the world. Yet more evidence that living simply is indeed complex.

So, yes indeed, a life of simplicity is not easy to cultivate, but once it is cultivated and continues to be tended, it can produce a life that fosters time and energy for the growth of your most wildest dreams. Had you complicated your life with extras and the unnecessary, the flowers (dreams) in your garden (life) would have been strangled by the weeds.