Ways of Beauty

...and how to find them

Photo Cliff Scholz

Sometime during the four years I was a Title 1-funded reading teacher in a medium security girls’ lockup, I had the idea of using Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as a tool of character analysis in some of the stories we read together. For those who aren’t familiar with the schema developed by Abraham Maslow to help better understand human motivation, it’s a pyramid with Physiological Needs like food, warmth and water at the bottom, and then up one level to Safety and Security, then Belonging Needs, then Esteem, and in some models, Cognitive and then Aesthetic needs before arriving at “Self-actualization” and even “Transcendence” at the very top of the pyramid.

The basic idea is that needs at the bottom of the pyramid have to be met before one can address the needs above them. I guess if a person is hungry or afraid for their safety (those would be Physiological and Security needs) they might not appreciate a song, painting or scenic vista as much, since those are more of “aesthetic” things. And I guess I can see that, sorta. According to one research paper I found online, Aesthetic Needs are some of the least studied, and Maslow himself wrote comparatively little about them.

Working with my own students I hoped we could loosely apply this scheme to better understand character motivation in the stories we were reading, and this then bridged into creating our own characters and writing short plays that the girls could perform as group readings. It turned out to be a pretty fun activity, which is a lot to ask in an instructional setting like lockup.

I made a mistake though, when we got to “Aesthetic Needs”. I should have taught them the word ‘aesthetic,’ but instead I substituted the word ‘beauty’. And when I started talking about “the need for beauty” or “beauty needs,” where do you think this classroom full of teenage girls went with it?

Again, it was at least partly my fault for the way I framed it. But instantly, when they thought “beauty,” they thought of an aisle at the local drugstore. Yes, the one lined with products that promise beauty by making people look different than they do. Heaven knows, I certainly don’t blame the girls. In what context does the word ‘beauty’ find usage in television and other media? Seems to me if someone is saying the word, it’s mostly about these very products. If so, then that’s what the word will start to mean for people.

But notice how with this shift of emphasis, something Maslow wanted to put near the top of his imagined hierarchy has moved down a few steps. Judging by the advertising and its focus, this moves the idea of beauty down into what according to Maslow were lower-level human needs such as Esteem, or Belonging, or maybe sex, which Maslow curiously places among Physiological Needs, at the lowest level of his hierarchy.

So, there’s a few things going on here. The first thing I’d like to point out is that a shift in word usage like this can gradually leave a portion of human experience out. If “beauty” starts to refer to an aisle at the drugstore and the products associated with it, what happens to the rest of the beauty of life? Seems it might get incrementally just a bit harder to talk about, and the two levels of meaning might even start to affect one another. Maybe people would start to think of beauty as something superficial – it’s only skin care and it’s “only skin deep,” after all. Or maybe they will think that beauty is something added on to life and the living, instead of something emerging from the depths, moment by moment.

Good news is, beauty and the beautiful people who manage to find it all over the place are both still around. People still use the word. I could even imagine sitting in a sports bar watching a baseball game: ball 1, strike 2, two out and a man on third. Then seeing a perfectly executed fastball to the inside corner — “Strike three!” — and someone might say, “That was beautiful!” or “That was a thing of beauty.” And I would not dismiss that. Likewise most of us see a mother picking up and nursing a baby as a thing of beauty.

Despite the rebranding of “reality” as something either unbeautiful or expensive, most people seem to understand that beauty is not just stored in a museum somewhere behind velvet ropes, though beauty can be found there, too. Wherever we are, people still seek it out and instinctively understand beauty as medicine for the soul. In fact, I offer that, an awareness of beauty is precisely the sensibility that gives the word ‘soul’ meaning, if it’s to have any these days. Beauty is not a thing reserved for the rich, nor for the privileged. Beauty is, however, a thing for the aware and the awakening. And that, indeed, can be a privilege — in any setting.

For those who cultivate the perception, beauty can be found in anything worthwhile, and it informs all the other kinds of need with deeper meaning. There’s beauty in healthy food and the sharing of it. There’s beauty in the hands that hold ours, in the hands that reach out to help, or that come bearing gifts. And there’s beauty in our appreciation of one another.

For some reason I’m thinking back to a summer night about 40 years ago. Some friends and I were talking on an apartment balcony as night came on, and my roommate Todd’s girlfriend Anastasia rose without a word, went inside, and returned with a lighted candle inside a glass candleholder. She placed it on the table where we were having tea. Her impulse to do so was beautiful. The way she acted on it was beautiful. The way the conversation ceased for a reverential moment as the guys watched her place it on the table around which we sat: that was beautiful, too. And the whole conversation became just a little more beautiful for that contribution.

Some time ago I shared the idea — linked here on Substack for your convenience — that beauty is wholeness seeking higher levels of wholeness. At first, such a statement probably sounds like “words,” or someone just trying to be clever. Too abstract. I understand. Let me say it again, though: Beauty is wholeness seeking higher levels of wholeness.

Let’s take flowers. Flowers are almost iconic manifestations of beauty. Ask people for an example of something they find beauty in, and many will say, “flowers”.

Let’s look at what a flower is. For botanists and other people who care about plants, flowers are usually the most distinguishing feature of a given plant species. In form and color, they are unique. They are also the most “inward” aspect of a plant, typically more delicate and short-lived than other plant parts like roots, bark, leaves or stems. And, because flowers are the reproductive organs of a flowering plant, they also represent the fulfillment of a function with forward momentum that reaches beyond themselves, something that carries energy into the future. Thwart a plant that is trying to flower, and it will typically try again.

The plant in its wholeness reaches toward a greater wholeness in completing its own life cycle. In flowering, even more than it usually does just by living and growing, the plant reaches beyond itself, connecting deeply and intimately with its own environment and the creatures that live there, offering nectar and pollen and fragrance and spinning off white light orbs in all directions. To the delight of fairies and angels, perhaps. Or even just us. And as we reconnect with that energy in ourselves, we become more whole and more beautiful as well. True, and it seems contrary to wholeness but it’s really not: Sometimes beauty seems to break us, break us open like flower buds and seed hulls and like germinating springtime breaks out all over the place when it comes. That’s how it works.

Is it any wonder we bring flowers to our lovers, to our mothers, to the sick, to fresh new friends, to the old, and to those who grieve? Beauty is wholeness seeking higher levels of wholeness. So again, is it any wonder we bring flowers to our lovers, to our mothers, to the sick, to fresh new friends, to the old, and to those who grieve? It’s an offering of healing power, an offering of promise, an offering of joy.

You know, childbirth isn’t always pretty, but most people will tell you it’s beautiful, often and even especially, those who suffer the most pain in the process. That’s worth pondering.

I mean, the plant is whole. Even as a seed, it’s whole. When it germinates it takes its wholeness to a new level. So we love to watch them coming up in the spring. When it flowers, it reaches a higher state of wholeness. Naturally, the new mother does too, and for precisely the same reason. I mean, ask one. Ask a new mom if she feels more whole, somehow. There’s always a new and deeper kind of beauty. Ram Dass said, “We’re all just walking each other home.” Maybe we’re all one another’s midwives as well. In either case, bring flowers.

Yet the baseball pitcher on the mound with that perfectly executed fastball also just birthed something, something that came from the depths, launched into the world. It’s another fulfillment of a carefully cultivated function, just on a different timescale. And when Anastasia placed the candle in our midst, that too was the fulfillment of inner capacity. And everyone present saw the placement of that candle for what it was: beautiful. The beauty of one person radiated and touched those around her.

So I wonder what the world would be like if beauty were the first consideration, not something to be reserved for when everything else is taken care of. What if beauty were the first criterion for any action? The first test: Is it beautiful? Can we do this — whatever it is — in a way that’s beautiful? Imagine if that were the big policy question, on a national level: Are people becoming more beautiful? If it doesn’t seem so, what’s to be done about it? And how can we learn to better see the beauty that’s there?

And I guess where I’d like to leave this is that maybe Maslow got his pyramid sorta upside down or something. Maybe everything starts with transcendence and self-actualization and then proceeds toward beauty, and all else follows from that. Maybe the whole thing is beautiful. Maybe it starts anywhere, and a circle would be a better shape to contain it. Or a sphere. Or a universe.

Wanna move toward beauty? Here’s a suggestion: move toward wholeness. Turn toward the sun and let the colors deep inside you shine in it!