Beautiful People
A deep kind of beauty, born of adversity and healing.
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.” — Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.
It’s wonderfully calming to be around these people, like taking a deep breath of fresh air and holding hands with hope. It’s a feeling I wish I could weave into a cozy blanket or bottle up and wash my hair with, sprinkle on my cereal or take sips of throughout the tough days. I truly hope everyone with fresh trauma weighing on them will find at least one such soul to have in their lives. Beautiful people with this confident compassion born of struggle and endurance show us how possible it is to recover and even thrive.
The people I’ve been fortunate enough to know who have “found their way out of the depths” seem to posses a certain self-awareness that allows full acknowledgement of what they went through and how it affects them. They’ve recognized their progression through various life stages and trials, are aware of how they operate in relationships and react to situations, and understand their own limitations and strengths.
The alternate outcome of this kind of introspection is the risk of getting stuck in a rut of self-absorbed tunnel vision. But if the depths are clambered out of in a grounded way, where hard truths are genuinely acknowledged and confronted, then awareness is gained in a more realistic, worldly context. This opens the door for the “compassion, gentleness, and deep loving concern” Elisabeth Kübler-Ross describes.
These people are able to recognize and relate to the different stages of the Going Through in others without being pulled back into the murky depths themselves. They can stand on firm ground and commiserate with someone who is drowning, and their calm presence alone can help the person see that dry land exists, even if they’re not able or ready to climb out quite yet.
Do you have someone like this in your life? Are you this person for someone else? Just imagine the profound healing that could take place in this world if all of us turned our tragedies and sorrows into this kind of sincere, tender, compassion. Beautiful indeed.