Beauty Is Good For You

The pursuit of beauty is considered by many a reserve of the privileged and inaccessible to people who have bills to pay. Yet, we all have an insatiable hunger for beauty and are attracted to the beautiful as moths are to light. It is in our nature to seek beauty and when we encounter it we are transformed, when we contemplate it we are enlightened. Indeed, beauty is good for you.

I remember how hopeless my final year of high school was. The previous class barely did well and even a blind person could see that we were going to do worse, the school was shrouded in despair with morale at an all time low. About midway through the year we had a new principal and he had one task, turn the ship around. He did it in the most unconventional way.

Instead of improving the academics he focused on making the school beautiful. He repainted the school and repaired the broken windows. Going to school was no longer an obligation, we wanted to go to school even if just to marvel at how beautiful it was. Our sense of pride was rekindled, and we all worked hard to make our school proud. Our performance exceeded expectations! It was a beautiful revolution.

While beauty is transformative, its absence leads to moral decadence as shown by the broken window theory. We have seen that ugly places encourage ugly behaviours therefore the lack of beauty in slums contribute to the high levels of insecurity. Maybe we should try making informal settlements more beautiful and see what happens.

Creating beauty doesn’t require artistic genius. It starts with simple acts: cleaning, organizing, and repairing. These tasks demand discipline, and discipline, like beauty, is transformative. Embracing beauty in our environments creates a ripple effect of positive change for ourselves and for those around us.