Finding Beauty in Decay

If you look closely you’ll find it there

In between the bright and glorious hallelujah chorus of autumn and the quiet solitude of a porcelain frosty winter’s day lives a dull droning pause. The world around me droops and decays in tones that I’ve never found attractive —a period where the leaves have lost their luster and have faded into drab hues. It’s a dreary pause where I wait for the winter season to arrive.

And this year the pause has lasted longer than usual.

It’s been a challenging in-between season time because I’m currently on a quest to seek beauty every day. It’s easy to find it in the playful melody of spring’s blooming flowers or the lively strum of summer’s vivid greens. It’s also readily apparent in winter’s first smile-inducing and gently sparkling snowfall.

But beauty seems absent in this extended dull tone of decaying leaves. Beauty remains elusive in all the desaturated colors that currently crowd my world.

Yet I’m not one to give up easy on my quest for beauty so I set out this week to see if I could find it somewhere out there in this pregnant monotone pause. I bundled up as the temperatures had dropped where I live and the dampness from an overnight rain shower was high. I kept my eyes wide as I strolled through my neighborhood to see what sights of beauty might reveal themselves within this rapidly decomposing world.

At first, I merely saw bleakness. But then an interesting thing happened. I looked down at a leaf smashed and wet on the sidewalk. I stopped my steps and took the time to truly gaze at it.

And within that space of a tender gaze, I saw the leaf in a new way. I saw lines. Textures. Pale and pretty pastel tones. Age spots that reminded me of my 56-year-old hands. This leaf has character.

I looked closely and saw beauty there.

Seeing beauty in a smashed and dampened leaf tuned my eyes to a different frequency—a different cadence. The sound no longer seemed dull and monotone but rather a soft and subtle hum. So I followed this quiet melody to see what other sights caught my eye.

I glanced up to view a few curling leaves tapping out their last notes before dropping to the earth. Like wise elders, they had one final story to tell. One last bit of wisdom to share.

Take a long look. There’s beauty there.

Next, my eyes were drawn to a tender scene lulling me to inch just a bit closer. A tight-knit community of luscious leaves sang their last hurrah in unison. They lay on the soden earth bunched together and softly waving their goodbyes.

Take a moment to gaze at them. There’s beauty there.

Then I turned to behold the gentle staccato beat of faded blooms thumping out their final rhythm before the snow covers their pinkish hue. Full of texture and squiggles these lovely ladies continue to share their gracefully aging pops of color.

Look closely. There’s beauty there.

There’s a quiet symphony happening right now. A last breathing out. A sighing before a long winter's rest. There’s beauty in aging. In decaying. It may not be apparent at first glance. But if we look closely it’s there.

Beauty is everywhere.

“What people love about life is its miraculous beauty; what they hate about death is the loss and decay around it. Yet losing is not losing, and decay turns into beauty, as beauty turns back into decay. We are breathed in, breathed out.” ~ Stephen Mitchell

kasey sparks, © 2023

To quote Ram Dass, “We’re all just walking each other home.” If you’d like to join me on the journey, click here.