Five Days of Beauty: Day 1-Operation Find Beauty

I've gone back and forth so many times about what I want this blog to really be about. It started off as a travelogue of an American living abroad, because that is what made sense. I was, in fact, an American living abroad, but I didn't really know how much people actually cared or needed such a thing, and honestly, I didn't know how much I did either.

Then I thought about using it as a portfolio to share my creative work. I like to dabble in a lot of different kinds of creative mediums, and thought it might be fun to share my work with whomever found it interesting. But honestly, I kind of get board with myself, and my creative juices haven't really been flowing lately. 

But I liked the creative/arts idea, and got inspired by the beauty around me.

You see, I live in a culture where you have to be intentional to see beauty. The desert dust and climate of North India doesn't automatically fit one's typical idea of beauty (at least not to me...) and I have found myself battling to find beautiful things. About a year ago, I started using the hashtag "operationfindbeauty" to remind myself that there are beautiful things all around me if I just open my eyes and look past the dirt and trash. It helped and soon my instagram was full of beautiful things that I could revisit whenever I needed. 

"OperationFindBeauty" also helped me to broaden my scope of beauty. Before this project, my definition of beauty was many times synonymous with perfection and lined up with what I liked personally. There is nothing wrong with having a liking toward one thing over the next, but I learned that there is beauty in everything, and I needed to open my senses in order to be educated and embrace the beauty I don't yet know. 

For example, because of where I was raised, my ears are tuned to enjoy a western style of music. When I came to India, I had a hard time listening to eastern music, because to me, it sounded pitchy, screechy, and out of tune. Once I opened my mind and educated myself on the history and traditions of music in eastern cultures, I could see the beauty in it. Is it my favorite thing to listen to? No, but I can appreciate the beauty that is there. 

So what does that mean for the blog? Well, I want this corner of the internet to be a place where we can explore and celebrate beautiful things. Beauty, and our ability to experience it, is a gift, and I want to use it! I'll be posting all kinds of things to help us broaden our understanding of true beauty. I encourage you to email me or tag me on instagram in something that you find beautiful. You can find my social media links to the right.

Come back for more on our definition of beauty tomorrow. This is just day one, friends. 

AJ