What is beauty?
In western culture we focus on physical beauty. If you look a certain type of way, you are pretty. If you don’t look like this famous person on the cover of this magazine, you aren’t beautiful. I’ve fallen into this before thinking I’m not pretty enough because I don’t look like whoever. Western culture focuses so much on who you are and what you have. It’s all about how you look, what clothes you are wearing, how your hair is, how your makeup looks – all of these physical things. I challenge you to really think about what beauty is and where it comes from.
In the short time I have been in India I’ve been mesmerized by the beauty here. Sometimes my mind can’t even comprehend the beauty all around me. It’s everywhere I look! From watching the sunrise from the roof of where I stay because I can’t sleep, to sitting at the top of a mountain just looking at the view, to the little girl I see every morning with her puppy as I’m walking to breakfast who always laughs at me cause I tell her I want her puppy, to the girls I sat with at this Muslim school who don’t speak english other than “I love you” and that’s all they said to me for hours, to sitting in team time with my team and all of us laughing so hard at each and making dumb yak jokes, to watching my squad work together like a family of 60. I could go on and on with moments like these. These moments had beauty in them for different reasons.
The landscape here is breathtaking! There are so many moments you just have to stand there and take all the beauty in, and your brain still can’t even fathom it. This is one of the most beautiful places I’ve been. It’s so green here. Mountains everywhere you look. The sunrises and sunsets I can’t even put into words. That’s just the outward beauty of this place. The people here have a beauty that comes from within. The people here are way more hospitable than I’ll ever be. We are complete strangers to them. We walk past them on the road and they stop and shake our hands. We walk by their houses and they invite us in for dinner. They want us to be part of their lives, and they don’t care who we are; they just want us to feel at home in their town.
We went to this village where the whole community was Muslim and we couldn’t talk about Jesus or pray or anything. We went to a school there, and we were told we were going to be doing medical work. When we got there, they told us the students didn’t speak English and that we would just hang out in the classrooms with them. We met these girls who were about 14 years old and they were so excited that we got to spend the day with them even though they could understand us. I learned that there are so many ways to communicate with out being able to speak the same language. We sang silly songs and drew hearts and smiley faces. I know that doesn’t really sound like we did much, but the joy those small things brought those students was evident. Most of them have never seen white people, let alone Americans, and by the end of they day they were all saying “Miss, I love you!” It made my heart melt a little inside. Their beauty came from within themselves. Their joy expressed more beauty than their physical appearances could.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been finding beauty in the small things and in the world around me. If you must, take a moment out of your day to look around and find the beauty in your everyday life. Beauty is everywhere, you just have to look for it. You may find it’s not what you expected. Just slow down from your busy lives and look around.
-TaylorB
P.S.
This month we have every limited wifi, so I’m sorry to all my supports who haven’t heard from me. I appreciate each and everyone of you! You all are amazing and I love you!
