Miss Rumphius was one of my favourite read-aloud picture books. In it, our heroine is told as a child that her job is to make the world more beautiful. When she is older, she doesn’t believe she can accomplish this, until birds start spreading her lupine seeds. She joins them, and soon the countryside is turned into a vista of pinks and purples and blues for everyone to enjoy.
I think that’s a nice philosophy for life, don’t you? It came back to me because I’m reading Anne of Green Gables out loud again, this time to my younger daughter. That classic makes you feel happier, bigger, invigorated and touched all at the same time. What a treasure.
I worry that we have forgotten the value of beauty in our pursuit of success and fame. In our world of Paris Hiltons and Tom Cruises and Donald Trumps, we have often replaced goodness with name-recognition. We go for shock value to get people to notice us, so that rebelling is seen as a virtue, even if you hurt people in the process.
The artist Paul Cezanne once said, “when I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or a flower. If it clashes, it is not art.” In days gone by, most people agreed. Art and music from previous centuries was meant to inspire awe and enjoyment, not screams of horror, like those you hear around you when Michael Jackson appears on the screen. I remember a trip my kids and I took to the National Gallery in Ottawa a few years ago. They were blown away by the Cezannes and Monets, but then we arrived at the modern art section to be greeted by the Horrifying Hairy Naked Bum photograph. This wasn’t an artistic bum; this was a bum that made kids run in terror. It would have made the world far more beautiful to have covered up that bum. Come to think of it, that’s a good rule of thumb for many modern clothing choices today, but the image—much to my chagrin—has remained with me.
That naked bum had no purpose except to shock. In a more sinister way, Kimveer Gill, who shot up Dawson College, and his Vampire Freaks web community, did the same thing. Even those of us who are not homicidal, though, may err on the wrong side when we care mostly about being right, amassing wealth, or getting ahead at whatever cost. Too often today we forget about the simple value of making life beautiful.
In the 1990 movie Crazy People, advertising executive Dudley Moore has a crisis of conscience because his whole life is about lying to people. He decides to make advertisements that tell the truth (Volvo: “They’re boxy, but good.” A now-forgotten airline: “Most of our passengers arrive alive”). His coworkers lock him up in an asylum, but meanwhile his “truth” ads are runaway hits, because people yearn for honesty.
I think that’s what making the world more beautiful looks like. It doesn’t mean we all have to be artists; it means that we have to act with integrity and generosity in whatever situation we find ourselves.
We can make the world more beautiful by raising kids to be selfless and kind. We can make the world more beautiful by baking amazing cookies, by tending flowers, by listening to a moody teenager who needs to talk. We can make the world more beautiful by sponsoring a child from overseas, by talking to an elderly neighbour, by bringing a meal to a sick friend. We can make the world more beautiful by standing up against a tyrannical boss, a harassing co-worker, or a corrupt politician. Our soldiers in Afghanistan are making the world more beautiful by fighting evil and terror. We can all make the world more beautiful simply by getting our eyes off of ourselves and on to others.
In the end, it will not matter how much money we have made, or whether people knew our names. What will matter are the footprints we leave behind. And so, as I study my own life, I have to ask, what am I doing to make the world more beautiful? Maybe that’s a good thing for all of us to consider.
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