Once upon a time, when I first started my photography business, I was married to a very kind man, named Marty. Our marriage lasted 8 years. We were best friends and extremely poor the entire time. At one point, we could only afford one pair of shoes each. I knew my shoes would need to work for every occasion.
Reader, being poor is hard for a lot of serious reasons, but for someone as silly as me, the hardest was never being able to buy beautiful things. I decided to get a little wild about my shoe purchase. I bought tomato-red leather cowboy boots. Rain or shine, winter and summer, I wore those damn boots everywhere; at home, to work, to church (when I still went to church) for YEARS.
Eventually, as all beautiful things, my boots began to fall apart. We couldn’t afford to replace them. The red leather on the toes was soft, and as wrinkled as a kind, old face. Their black sole was unstitching and beginning to flop off. Little bits of its leather were scraped off on the sole’s edges revealing the brown beneath.
Me, baby Shiloh, and the red boots.
Marty and I had three children who were all under age six at the time. Most days, I was as exhausted as my boots. All of my energy went into parenting and building my business. All of our money did too. We were barely getting by and though Christmas was coming, we agreed to not spend anything on presents for each other. We agreed on one small present for each kid, and a Charlie Brown tree.
But the father of my children surprised me. On Christmas morning, I opened a packaged that contained my old red boots. He had stitched the floppy sole back on. He had taken a black sharpie and colored in along all of the sole’s rubbed off edges. I KNOW. I cannot write this without a lump in my throat. I would like to tell you I was immediately overcome with gratitude when I pulled my beloved boots out of the box, but it’s not the truth. As I slipped them on and felt their softer than ever leather around my ankles, part of me was moved, of course I was.
But the biggest part of me was so utterly disappointed.
I am ashamed to report, as Marty gave me the MOST tender gift in the tender history of creative couples of ALL tender time, all I could manage to give him in return was a small, sad smile. My cold heart was frozen in the dreary thought of having to wear the same pair of old boots for who knew how much longer. It seemed too unfair that we should work so hard for so many years, only to have the reprieve of beauty constantly out of reach. I’ve never needed much, I swear, I haven’t — but the particular artist in me then and now, wants to live, wear, dream and be, ALL beauty, ALL the time.
You, smart reader, are probably beginning to sense what it would take me another EIGHT YEARS of hard work, heartbreak, courage and MANY mistakes to learn: I didn’t understand the true nature of beautiful things.
I didn’t understand that beauty is a thousand layers beyond appearance and form.
I didn’t understand that form without those layers is not beauty at all.
I didn’t know beauty could not be bought, or forced. That when you set out to “do beauty,” you will miss it for sure.
I didn’t know beauty could only be seen if you learned how to LOOK with beauty in your own eyes.
I didn’t understand beauty as wild and numinous — as the soul’s calling and homecoming.
Some part of my subconscious suspected of course, as every human spirit does, as yours does now, the infinite nature of beauty, unmatched in its ability to sustain, inspire and return us to ourselves.
The human heart is obsessed with beauty.
Otherwise I wouldn’t have spent my life chasing it, however misguided, and we wouldn’t have an entire culture still starving because in our haste and hunger to buy beauty, we mistakenly built around beauty’s imposters; glamour and status.
If I had understood any of that, I would have been able to cry then, as I am crying now thinking of those beautiful red boots. How they were made immeasurably more beautiful by the heartbreak of a struggling, young couple, and the gesture of a loving husband who knew his wife wanted more, but gave the absolute most that he was able to give—a stitched back on, sharpie filled-in sole.
To this day, accepting gifts is a challenge for me. I feel undeserving. I want to hide every time. Maybe it’s my once upon a time rejection of such a beautiful pure gift that makes me feel this way. I think receiving real beauty is hard for a lot of people to feel worthy of. Beauty is intense! I think that’s partly why we substitute with poor imitations of beauty like whatever new thing money can buy, a style we *think fits beauty’s "formula" (hint, beauty is the opposite of formulaic) or seeking approval by digital masses instead of real love by a treasured and trusted few. Our culture taught us to want these things, and although they are not inherently wrong, when they are our primary goal, they leave us far from ourselves, and hungrier than ever.
But I don’t think true beauty would have us hide from her gift. Beauty calls us to forgive ourselves every morning with the sun, wants to reconcile our shame and invite us back to our bodies, wants to mirror our yin and yang with the sky and the sea, wants to sing us to sleep each night with the moon (ideally the actual moon, not pictures of it on our phone).
This kind of beauty is available now, and was always available to me no matter my financial security or how much I lost. But until I replaced entitlement with gratitude and constant distraction with mindful presence, I was blind to beauty’s abundance.
I left my marriage to Marty for many reasons, and I do not regret it. But I left in search of beauty, holding only half its map of wonder. In the 8 years since my divorce, it’s taken losing another relationship, my identity (several times over), a whole lot of money and nearly my mind, to realize what I was looking for did not exist externally, but was waiting patiently in my own pockets. I needed to do the hard work of radical self compassion, and radical responsibility for my own life to be able to hear again the beauty and purpose, already whole in my heart. Now, the core skill set of beauty is the tool box I use for my art, my life, relationships, and teaching others to do the same:
Wonder
Creative Presence
Gratitude
Empathy
Complexity
Mystery
Profound attention
Flaws
Essence
Embodiment
Wildness
Integrity
The elemental
Light and dark
Spirit
Solitude
Stillness
Though the outdoors, may not be available to all, I think everything on that list is available to us within our inner landscapes. I offer beauty especially right now because of its power to meet and soften fear’s hard edges. The best part? You don’t have to earn any of it. We love beauty so much because it is OUR true nature. So you simply have to allow, immerse, invite, and notice consistently to bring your awareness of beauty rushing back into your life. Warning: it may take a leeetle (or 8 years going on a lifetime) of practice to REALLY get the hang of it. But I can help, if you want me to.
I still constantly crave beautiful things. I think that’s ok. I still wish to be able to buy great works of art and piles of books. I want to experience transcendent live music, eat delicious foods, and dwell in gorgeous wabi-sabi interiors full of light and well designed objects where form meets intention in the most elegantly flawed ways. But honestly, right now, I miss libraries and thrift stores the most. And I know I am never removed from the beauty of this complex, yet pure moment, as it is, and neither are you.
““Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.””
Things may be dark, but I’ll be here, doing my best to keep the light on for you.
Love,
Yan
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