The Ugly Beautiful Gift

French:  d’un beau affreux
German: hubsch-hasslich

The other week, my sister found a $100.00 bill – just lying on the sidewalk. We got so excited about the find!!! Beers were purchased that evening for her entire soccer team.  

 And in true fashion, she asked the following questions:

 Why do we only celebrate what we think is awesome?

Why don’t we celebrate that which we experience as painful?

Are they both not a gift?

Do we not find greatness and growth in things that challenge us?

Are they not both an equally worthy gift?

So laughingly we agreed to engage in the proposed experiment: That we celebrate next time something we perceive as “terrible” happened upon us.      

NOT EVEN two days later, hiking up Mt. Chester by myself, singing at the top of my lungs, a random twist/compression, ended with me at the hospital with a fractured ankle.  

As I laid on the stretcher, my mind remembered our “suggested” experiment…..

My first thought: No hockey, no skating, no exercise, no driving, no walking, no moving fast, no working, no sleeping, no dancing... A LOT of NO’s. (NO FREAKING WAY I’M CELEBRATING THIS!)

Second thought: How does one celebrate this????

Third thought: Why would someone celebrate this?

Fourth thought: This is the UGLIEST gift ever, and WHY did this happen to ME?

Fifth thought: I’m hungry… I want a croissant.

Here’s the thing, to learn how something works, at times we may need to go through it.

So I felt my feels (sadness, anger, bitterness and a bit of humour), and then continued to ponder a bit further -- how do I celebrate this instead of asking, why did this happen?

While thinking (and sitting on the couch with my leg elevated), I opened a book -- and the whole page was about finding beauty in everything, to practice seeing through ugliness to the beauty.

So as the week progressed, I began to look for the beauty (the gifts), and shockingly, I found it:

I began to experience what SLOW felt like again.

Friends stopped by with lunch and to play games.

I napped in the middle of the afternoon.

I read and painted.

I sat, and the kids would come by and chat.

I watched the sun make snow prints in the backyard.

Paul Gauguin (artist) used an expression: 

 'Le laid peut etre beau'
The ugly can be beautiful.
The dark can give birth to life; suffering can deliver grace.
 

I’ve known many clients who have had terrible, awful, horrible things happen to them, and the ones that seem to find ease, are those who CHOOSE the PRACTICE of finding gratitude (rain drops on a leaf, and the smell of cold air) in the craziest of times. 

I’m not suggesting that we can see this every time, but what if we began to look for the beautiful, in even the ugliest gifts? The practice of looking with different eyes, the eyes of gratitude, and being thankful for littlest of things.  

Can we transform the Ugly into the Beautiful? 

Here's to many gifts, and much gratitiude! Wishing you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, even if the gifts are ugly. ;)  

Rosie

P.S. End results: It was a fun experiment, but.I have got to say my preference is still the $100, ahahaha!