Sleeping Beauty

As you probably know by now, I don’t normally have any sense of what the blog’s going to be about until I crank up the laptop and today’s no different. Sometimes I write about the process, sometimes it’s what’s going on in my life or for those around me and other times it’s just a bit of a riff on whatever takes my fancy. Let me warn you now, I think it’s going to be one of those days when who knows where we might end up ...

I’ve spent the past couple of days doing the most curious thing – writing a holiday brochure about a place I’ve never been to. Luckily it’s one that caught my imagination long ago, but even so, this has been an interesting challenge to bring to life a city you’ve never visited and write entertainingly about its various quarters without ever having set foot in it. Thank God for the internet – or maybe not, as without it I’d probably have had to make the trip myself, which would have been much more fun.

Having to research the city so thoroughly has made me even more determined to see all these wonderful sights I’ve been writing about. Being fascinated by art and architecture, one of the greatest pleasures of travelling is to experience these fabulous buildings or masterpieces that I’ve studied. It took me two trips to Rome to finally get a chance to see inside the Pantheon and I’ve racked up a sweaty crawl into the heart of the Great Pyramid at Gizeh along the way, but my all-time favourite piece of unseen architectural splendour is the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. It’s particularly irksome to write lovingly about it without ever having had the chance to witness firsthand the way the mystical quality of light shimmers through the nave, giving the impression that the vast dome seems to hover above you. I’ve admired the Ayasofya from afar for so long, I hope it lives up to its reputation when I finally make it to exotic Istanbul.

That does rather remind me of a fabulous travel piece by the comedian Dave Barry. Writing from an American perspective, he touches on some of the classic moments of discovery about tourism in Europe. My favourite tale of his is the one about the American tourists standing around at the Louvre, asking “Where’s the big Mona Lisa?”. As an iconic piece of art, it looms so large in our culture that we assume it to be a huge canvas, but in reality it’s quite small, hence the dazed and confused US tourists. He also does some great lines about European traffic, including the fact that Italian taxi drivers will not only drive you to your hotel, but right into the lobby.

Inspirational places or paintings uplift us because beauty and artistic or architectural achievement lift our thoughts way above the mundane to something greater. Religious architecture like the Ayasofya is specifically designed to direct your eyes heavenward, to inspire awe and a sense of the mysterious. That particular iconic building alone has weathered three empires and a transition from Christian church to mosque and still manages to inspire people from all faiths to make the pilgrimage to see it.

Beauty, of a place or a piece of art, reminds us of the truth of who we are. It wakens us again to higher aspirations – for space, time, joy, reverence and reflection and to finding the deeper, richer parts of ourselves. As Plato’s prayer so charmingly expresses – “grant that I may become beautiful in my soul within, and that all my external possessions may be in harmony with my inner self” – we can be as influenced by our outer world as by our inner one, so it behoves us to make that world as beautiful as it can be.

We know how powerfully the absence of beauty can affect us as a society when we see how quickly run-down urban areas can become desolate and crime-ridden. In Broken Windows, Broken Business, Michael Levine has written of the ‘broken windows’ theory, where even small flaws left unattended can become attractors for far greater problems to come. In essence, when people don’t feel inspired by or engaged with their environment, they cease to care for it, and as they do, it will attract more of the same disrespect, degenerating quickly into dereliction. As much as this applies to neighbourhoods, it also applies to businesses. Small problems left unattended can grow into much larger difficulties, affecting the entire reputation and livelihood of the company.

Equally, on a personal level, even small things that you tolerate every day can be dragging your energy and vitality down. If every time that you look around the house you’re seeing things that need repairing or undone chores, then those things will be weighing on your mind, even if you’re not consciously aware of it. If you bite the bullet and get them sorted, you’ll be amazed at how much energy that liberates and how free you’ll feel. That’s why working on ‘tolerations’ is one of the first things a coach will have you do – it helps you to clear up your physical and psychic space and give you energy to go forward with the changes you want to make in your life.

This week, it’s going to be a two-fold process again. First, identify three things you’ve been tolerating, like undone chores, putting up with things that need mending, or conversations you’ve been meaning to have but haven’t managed to get around to. Then have a Nike moment and just do them. Pay attention to how good that makes you feel and do three more if you have the time.

Secondly, look at your home and your place of work with new eyes. How can you make it more beautiful? What can you place around you that will help you to find moments of peacefulness and joy? In one of my more manic jobs, I used to keep a statue of the fat, happy, laughing Buddha on my desk as a reminder not to take things so seriously. Do what it takes to distract yourself from habitual ways of thinking and behaving. Take some time out in a natural place of beauty, perhaps in a park or by the river. Step out for a bit of silence in a local church when you need some peace. It doesn’t have to be a religious experience – the quality of the atmosphere and the beauty of the architecture will work its magic whether you’re a believer or not. Go to a gallery and soak up the art at lunchtime. See a film with amazing scenery. What’s important is that you find ways to bring outer beauty into your life, to uplift you, inspire you and awaken the fabulous beauty that lies within.

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All material © 2006 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 30 Oct 06)