Beauty is a Practice

A code for living used by the beautiful courtesans of ancient Greece went like this:

Beautiful manners

to

Beautiful thoughts

to

Beautiful aspirations

to

Beautiful meditations.

One practice leads to the next; one supports the other. The mastery of all of these practices is the culmination of beauty. All beautiful manners and so on are rooted in the desire to do good things for other people. To make someone feel better with a soft word or smile; to come to someone's aid, whether by serving them food or providing them medical care, all in the spirit of gentle-hearted love. 

Notice that "manners" come before thoughts. Sometimes, it is hard to get "in the mood" for beauty and kindness. That's all right. As long as you are in control of your physical body, you can still pretend. And in the practice of beautiful, graceful, kind manners, the accompanying thoughts begin to flow. As these thoughts flow through your days, they start to color your aspirations, and you become a different, better, more beautiful woman. Until at last each moment of your life is a simple and beautiful meditation. This is our calling as women. It doesn't matter your age, if you're poor, if you're busy; every moment has the potential for practicing beauty.

Emulate Audrey Hepburn. According to those who knew her, she treated every single person in her sphere with gentle kindness, and she spent a good amount of her career doing humanitarian work. Lest we dismiss her as an outlier saint, her philosophy for daily life was simple and frank, summed up in one phrase from this gentle lady: "Others matter more than you do. So don't fuss dear, get on with it." 

These are tough-love words, aren't they? It is hard, when we focus on our own self-improvement, to let go of our insistent ego. When we want to be beautiful, we want to observe ourselves being beautiful. And this can interfere with the practice of true beauty: involving ourselves whole-heartedly in the improvement of the world.

Your Beautifying Assignment:

Choose an act of kindness or service that you have perhaps neglected for a while. It could be volunteering, it could be visiting a relative you find difficult, or giving money to the ragged woman you always walk by on your way to work. Decide on the time you will do it. And then, do this thing. Be aware of the resistance in your mind and body, that tries to pull back with cynicism and distraction. But counter with Audrey's strong words: "Others matter more than you do. So don't fuss dear, get on with it." 

Photo credit: CLF / Foter.com / CC BY