Beauty NOW...or, When I look back, will I wish I had done more dishes?

A mentor once told me about the wise person who had observed that when most people look back over their lives, they rarely wish they had cleaned the house more, or done more dishes.

No, most people treasure the meaningful and beautiful moments they've had.  Or they may wish they had made more time for those.  Followed their heart's desire and smelled the roses more.

I was thinking back to that tale about the dishes yesterday as I re-read for the third time the brilliant, Pulitzer prize-winning article in The Washington Post about the infamous experiment in which Joshua Bell performed free in a D.C. metro station.  Remember? When almost no one among the thousand plus passersby during the 45-minute "concert" stopped to appreciate the unspeakable beauty of this world renowned virtuoso playing masterpieces on his priceless violin.  If you care about art, beauty, humanity, integrity, culture, excellence, the meaning of life, check the article out and maybe some of the video.  (See "Pearls Before Breakfast," Gene Weingarten et al, www.washingtonpost.com, 4/8/07)

Mind-blowing.

I ask myself, who am I in this story?  Am I one of the hundreds who scurried by the breathtakingly gorgeous music without pausing?  Was I someone who didn't even hear Bell because I was talking on my cell phone?  Or, might I have been one of the parents who kept hurrying a child along, a child who was wisely craning his neck to witness this sorcerer of a musician?  Was I "too busy for beauty," rushing, rushing somewhere to something...er, what was it that was so important?

I really hope that I would have been one of the few people who pounced on this rare opportunity for loveliness. And lapped. It. Up.

Who stopped and listened and appreciated and was enthralled by something so magical. That I would have thanked Bell, either with smiling applause or compliments, and definitely with some cash. I truly hope so.

I've been thinking about this a lot after my adventure dancing in public spaces on our road trip to Wisconsin.  I'm not sure of who watched or was affected by my offering of beauty and dance.  (I didn't have the benefit of an entourage of media folks :)).  The main point was to create and offer something beautiful.

Because what I do now know is that it is crucial to my life to appreciate and share beauty every day.  I need to fight like the dickens to live that priority.  I need to do it even though the culture in which I live may value other things more highly, like money and image and "the bottom line."  I need to do it even if, and maybe especially if, I'm the only one who stops to smell the flowers or see the sunrise or hear music... or dance.

YES! Beauty matters!

Don't get me wrong.  I know full well how so many demands pull us in different directions every moment.  The career and the family and the friends and the civic duties and the laundry and the forms and the meal prep.  Some demands are essential. Many may be important.  But going back to Goethe's advice, we need to experience art and beauty every day so that "worldly cares...may not obliterate... the sense of the beautiful....implanted in the human soul."

Amidst all of the things we must do to stay afloat and to buoy others, all of those dirty dishes, there have just GOT to be many moments of inspiration, loveliness, excitement, joy.  I've got to be more than a mere walking to-do list. Or the to-do list has got to interweave a visit to the new art gallery. And pausing to watch the geese seamlessly change formation as they fly overhead and to appreciate strangers lending a helping hand in the aftermath of a hurricane.  There has to be time to brainstorm with other dancers about how we inspire the experience of beauty and time to offer up creations of beauty to other folks and to the universe.

These moments of  intense pleasure and deep satisfaction that are the hallmarks of beauty ignite our inspiration.  They put a spring in our step that keeps us going, and striving.  We need to treasure and cultivate this food for the soul.   Not only so we won't look back in regret.  But also so that our lives right this instant, are richly embroidered, robustly pulsing, and shimmeringly alive.