How Beauty Will End the Chaos and Save the World

Finding beauty is revolutionary and an act of resistance.

Ranunculus and anemone bouquet. Photo by author.

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The most beautiful thing I saw today wasn't on Instagram. This morning, while deep into my iPad reading, I saw a surprise rainbow on my living room floor.

I started the day in my usual digital trance with a cup of Joe—checking emails, pondering Wordle letter combos, studying French on Duolingo, and catching up on social media. Glimpsing the unexpected colors startled me from my electronic stupor and pulled me toward something worth stopping for.

Photo a morning rainbow with the author’s living room rug and couch as a backdrop.

This straight-edge rainbow felt like a personal gift for me.

Nature's painting on my rug felt surreal, even though nature is the most authentic and genuine thing around. Its presence would be fleeting, so I stopped what I was doing to look and appreciate.

Call it serendipity, but I had recently decided to focus on finding beauty in every moment. I didn't have to expend any effort this morning searching because it had simply appeared.

Focusing on beauty may sound silly or impossible, but it is an antidote to the hideous agenda of the first 100 days of the new administration in the United States. Cruelty marks every new executive order and despicable "truth" tweet. A torrent of national ugliness has been let loose to a degree and an extent I'd never witnessed before.

The disorientation and frenzy that seem to be the administration's goal aren't simply chaotic—they're deliberately destabilizing. While chaos can contain beauty, what we're experiencing now is designed to fragment our attention and exhaust our spirits. To counteract the madness, we must reorient and stabilize with a giant wallop of beauty.

Beauty grounds.

Beauty bewitches.

Beauty needs no translation.

Beauty is soothing to the eye and delivers peace to the senses.

"In difficult times, carry something beautiful in your heart."

Blaise Pascal

Becoming conscious of beauty and prioritizing it has become my artistic pursuit and an obsession. I landed on this path without awareness and realized that anything can be transformed into something beautiful, even ordinary tasks like making the bed or designing a celebratory outfit to attend a wedding.

I read an article recently that challenged the reader to find something beautiful in every moment. At first, I thought the idea was far-fetched. I could create beauty, but could I find it already there? Despite my misgivings, I tried the exercise and realized that finding beauty wasn't nearly as complicated as I thought.

You can always find beauty, even in mud—especially in mud. Just look at this beautiful lotus flower if you don’t believe me.

Photo by Göran Eidens on Unsplash

Flowers are an easy reminder that beauty surrounds us.

I planted my ranunculuses and anemones corms on a mild February day. To my delight, I already see hardier flowers that survived the northeast winter, popping up through the soil. Dead herb and flower dahlia stalks from the fall litter the bed, but the light green sprouts peek out promisingly.

Ranunculuses and anemones are late spring bloomers, and I'm itching to make my first arrangement. The sole purpose of my garden is to make bouquets for myself and others.

I intentionally set my crop of ranunculus and anemones above ⬆️ ⬆️ ⬆️ in a dog treat bucket to prove that beauty will not let itself be spoiled.

Two summers ago, I gave a bouquet of my dahlias to a friend who lives alone. She was ecstatic to receive the flowers and kept repeating how beautiful they were. I realized she hadn’t received a bouquet in a long time, not even from herself.

The following year, she planted her own dahlia tubers, which she then cut, created bouquets from, and gave away.

That's how beauty works—it spreads. One small act of sharing something beautiful spawns a whole new garden of possibilities.

"Beauty will save the world."

Fyodor Dostoevsky

While I wait for my spring garden to emerge fully, I'm arranging Lenten roses and daffodils in vases for myself. These small acts of creating beauty feel like quiet resistance in a world determined to keep us anxious and off-balance.

When you make it your practice to find beauty, it finds you.

Nature's interruption this morning reminded me that there are better things ahead if we look for them. And we must look for them if we're going to make it through this ride.

Beauty doesn't ask us to ignore what's happening in the world. Instead, it offers us a place to stand firm while we face it, a place to remember what we're fighting for.