Photo By: rakeif

It’s a beautiful morning. You stretch, rub your eyes and slowly get up. The sun is shining and it looks like it’s going to be a great day. You wash your teeth, and then proceed to make a cup of tea. But, there is a problem. There is no power. This also means that if the water boiler in the bathroom doesn’t have any hot water in it, you will have to take a cold shower. It also means that you cannot blow dry your hair, make toast, and you certainly cannot use the internet. It’s beyond frustrating, especially when it happens at least once a week. In the western world, a power cut would be very rare and when it did happen, most of the time it wouldn’t take a long time for it to come back. Here, when the power is out, there’s no guarantee that it will come back within the hour. Sometimes it’ll take a few minutes, other times it’ll take an hour or two, and sometimes it takes half a day or a whole day for it to return. When you have something to do, or you need a shower in order to start your day, these random and frequent power cuts are rather annoying.

And yet, they have another side to them. Yes, they are inconvenient, but sometimes the inconvenience forces you to discover new things, new ways of doing things. So the tea won’t be made using the tea kettle, but the gas oven can be used. It takes longer, but the cat can be fed in the mean time. Regular toast can’t be made, but I can melt some cheese on bread in the oven, something which I don’t often do because again, it takes more time, but it is rather tasty. I can’t wash my hair because I can’t blow dry it, and not blow drying it causes some pretty intense headaches. But, I can always wear my hair up, which I don’t like to do, but from time to time, it’s rather refreshing. So the internet can’t be used, but the books on my bookshelf can finally be looked at. The albums I said I’d make can be started. The house can be cleaned up a bit. The cat can be played with. Shopping can be done. A walk can be enjoyed. A phone call can be made to someone you don’t usually talk to (assuming you have a corded phone). The dinner could be eaten in candle light. You get the idea, right?

Not having electricity for a day is a complete nightmare for the modern person, but if we can sit back, take a deep breath and just accept that the news will not be read today, or the blog post will be a few hours late, or the e-mail won’t be checked until tomorrow, then we can enjoy those things that 24 hour electricity has taken away from us. Really, it can be quite enjoyable to do things differently from time to time. And, if there is an absolute need for the internet, there are always internet cafes that can be used. Perhaps the inconvenience will annoy you at first, but after the use of the internet, treat yourself to a nice cafe that you always wanted to try. Walk through that park that you always wanted to walk through but always had to rush by in order to make it somewhere on time. Take a book with you and read on a bench in a park. Build a snowman in your backyard. The point is not to sulk about not being able to do that which you had planned for the day, but to do something that you wouldn’t have done if the electricity would have been on. For the reasons stated above, I’ve come to rather enjoy power cuts. They are still frustrating some days, but I am learning to get over it rather quick. All I have to do is look in the direction of my bookcase and my frown turns into a smile within seconds.

Photo by: just.luc

Some like it thin, some like it thick. Some like it firm, some life it soft. But everyone loves a pillow. Pillows are the epiphany of comfort. Whatever shape, size or filling, you are bound to find a comfortable pillow somewhere. I know I definitely have a favorite pillow – the traditional American rectangular shaped ones, synthetic and medium. Right now I have a traditional European (or at least German and Romanian, I’ve been told the Netherlands have different sizes) one which, for those of you who don’t know, is a huge square. I believe it measures at 80 x 80 cm. We had bought these pillows at IKEA before moving to Tbilisi, in the fear that we wouldn’t find a single pillow in this country that would fit our cheap but nice IKEA bed sheets that we also bought from Germany. This, I find to be uncomfortable, and have, since then been complaining about how annoying it is to sleep on such a pillow. My complaining is why I decided to write about the beauty of pillows this week. I wanted to force myself to find the beauty, even in this huge cube of a pillow, and I must say, that I am very glad I did. Okay, maybe the pillow and I haven’t become best friends, but I sure do appreciate it. I appreciate it because I couldn’t imagine sleeping on a wooden or porcelain pillow.

The pillow can be tracked back to Mesopotamia, which is today’s Iraq, and ancient Egypt. The Egyptians believed the head to be sacred, so they  decorated their pillows (which were usually solid wood with a curved middle) with lavish decorations. These pillows have been found in Pharaoh’s tombs signifying that they were only for the rich and famous. The Chinese also used wood but also jade, bronze, bamboo and porcelain. I think the Chinese pillows are the most interesting, not only because they are made from so many different materials, but also because of the many different shapes they came in. You could have a pillow shaped like or decorated with pictures of animals, plants, humans or geometric figures. These pillow were sometimes called “Opium Pillows” by opium smokers. Why? Because when they smoked opium, they would say that the hardest pillow felt like a cloud. The Japanese also used similar types of pillows but they had one other type famous mostly to the Japanese – the tall hard pillow which protected Japanese women’s extensive hairdo’s by cushioning the back of their necks. Interesting enough, the reason why the Asians would not sleep on a sack of hey or rice or something softer, was because they believed that soft pillows would rob the body of its vitality and energy. They also believed it was bad for blood circulation and that it was unable to keep demons away.

The Greek and the Romans however, liked their comfort, and it was around this time period when softer substances were used to make pillows. Straw, reeds or feathers were commonly used, stuffed into a heavily embroidered pillow case. During the 16th Century, the pillow in its said form became more popular and it was most likely around this time that the pillow also started appearing under the heads of those that were not nobility. These pillows however, were less than ideal, and I know this first hand. No, I didn’t live in the 16th Century, but I did live in a Communist country, which was like going back a few hundred years while the rest of the world evolved happily with their synthetic pillows. These stuffed pillows were less than ideal because you had to change the stuffing on a regular basis since the feathers would get moldy and sometimes you could even find vermin entangled in there. I watched my grandma sit for hours taking out the feathers of our enormous pillows and stuffing it with new feathers. Not only was it extremely time consuming, but it didn’t look like a fun job. I always wondered where she got all of the feathers from – our chickens looked like they still had all of their feather. It was such a perplexing question for my young brain at the time, but because I was almost certain that she went stealing the feathers off the neighbours chickens, I never asked her.

It was also around this time that little pillows were taken to church so that the lovely madams could kneels on something soft rather than something hard, like in the previous centuries. And, speaking of church, I’m sure somewhere you’ve seen a bible placed on it’s very own little, most often silky, pillow. I bet this was originated during this era as well. Pillows became a luxury, and the best of the best had to have one. Then, slowly it found itself in the homes of the middle class and by the 20th century, even the poorer families were able to afford pillows. Even so, despite it’s new found popularity, the pillow was still able to retain its luxury, but nowadays, the pillow is just the pillow. There really isn’t anything extremely luxurious about it, everyone has one, two maybe even several pillows in their homes. Pillows are used as decoration on couches, but even more than that, they’re used for comfort on couches. Have you ever sat on a couch without some nice fluffy decorative pillows to soften the hard edges? Well, it’s not that great. Nowadays we are incredibly fixated on comfort, so much so that style has become a little dry, but that’s for another post. Let’s just conclude that, although my German cube pillow is not the best, I am so glad that I don’t have to sleep with my head on a stone, porcelain, wood or bronze pillow or some stuffed sacks. For the same reason, I hope that tonight when you rest your head on your cloud 9, you will enjoy your pillow a little more than the night before.

In the van, I was listening to music. We were barely moving and my dad was going on about how we’ll get home after midnight in this sort of traffic. Yeah, it was getting to me too. I had to go to the bathroom and I just wanted to be home so I wouldn’t need to spend another minute with my parents. Just as I was thinking that, I heard sirens. I got up from my lying position to see what was going on. In the far distance, you could already see a couple of ambulances and a fire truck. The sirens were the sound of a police car swinging past us. As we neared the site of the accident, we saw just how horrific it was. The cars resembled scrap pieces of metal. One had been on fire but had already been put out by the time we got there. Still, the whole car was black with ruin. We saw two people on stretchers lifted up into the ambulances. One looked severely burned, the other one was bleeding quite heavily. My mom, being religious, made the sign of the cross. My dad stopped complaining. I just sat there.

It seemed like forever before my thoughts resumed. In reality it was probably only a few seconds. I lay back down and tried to lose myself in the music again, but this time it wasn’t working. This wasn’t the first bad accident I had seen. In fact, I’ve seen things much worse than that before. This time, the accident happened at just that precise time when I was thinking this whole world was against me. I was perhaps 15 or 16 years old when I realized that the whole world was not against me. These thoughts were running through my mind when I jumped up from my seat and begged my dad to go back.

“What’s wrong? Did you forget something?” my mother asked, annoyed. She’s not a fan of impulsive thoughts.

“No, I just forgot to look at something!” I was desperate. This was my one chance.

“You forgot to look at something? Of course you forgot to look at something, your nose was in the books the whole weekend. You could have stayed at home if that’s all you wanted to do” my dad was quick to say.

“I know, that’s exactly why I want to go back.”

“We’re not going back. I didn’t drive one hour to drive back another hour and then drive back another hour and you know what I mean” my dad started, getting a bit confused at the end there. This made me laugh. I laughed out loud for a few minutes, unable to stop. I’m sure my parents thought I was losing my mind. Towards the end though, even they couldn’t keep a serious face and I could see my mom smiling and my dad smirking.

“Please?” I begged again.

“Whatever you want to look at better be good” my dad said, taking the exit that we were nearing and back we went.

I was determined to look at the place in a new light. I felt like I had just learned an important lesson. Upon arrival, a cloud of little flies were already dancing around my head. It was hard to ignore at first, but I just kept walking. I took in all the little white cottages lining the river. I looked at all the small shops selling beer and ice. A few teenagers sitting on a rock in the middle of the river, bathing and sun tanning. While my parents went to buy some sandwiches, I went to sit on a rock. I wasn’t looking where I was sitting, but just as I was about to put my hand down on the rock, I realized there was a whole army of ants patrolling around. I quickly jumped up. Those nasty ants. But as I looked at them, I realized that they’re really quite selfless creatures. They go out on long ventures to find food to bring home and share it with everyone else.

At this point, I was inspired to look around even more. I soon found the beauty in the decaying leaves, in the daylight, in the dirty crooked trees and even the dancing flies that were still around my head. This is when I also realized that my dad took me there not because he was selfish, but because he saw the beauty of the place. He already saw that which I had just learned. The rest of the day, I was floating in happiness. How could I have walked around 15 or 16 years of my life and not noticed the beauty in the simple things?

I took this new found revelation with me everywhere I went from that day on. The ability to see things in a different light was especially helpful a few years later when I found myself working part time at a hotel while still in University. While all my colleagues perfected complaining and judging the people walking through our door, I had the ability to be comfortable enough not to join my colleagues and actually giving the best service I could to these people. Yes, some were demanding, some were rude, some were nice, but they were all beautiful somehow. They were tall, small, large, larger. They were angry, sad, happy, and sometimes even drunk. No matter what they looked like, or how they behaved, they all had a story and a quality that made them unique. My ability to see the best in all of our guests eventually earned me the job of dealing with our most difficult guests and our most difficult situations. To most of my colleagues disbelief, I actually really enjoyed it.

I wanted to understand why things have so much beauty. After some contemplation, I decided that these things are beautiful, but that beauty is not necessarily obvious. I began to pay close attention to how people perceived things. “That’s so ugly”, “She’s so fat”, “He’s so weird”, “That’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen”. Those were all too common. Does it just take time? Will people eventually realize that even the fat woman or the broke down house or that weird kid in the corner of the classroom are beautiful? Will people eventually realize that once you learn the story behind something or someone, their beauty just radiates? Or do some people go their entire lives without noticing how many amazing things are placed around us? I don’t know. But what I do know is that by realizing what I had been missing, I found a whole new world. A world of beauty. Everything is better when everything and everyone is beautiful.

I made a commitment to myself that day when my dad returned to Rice Lake – the place up north with all the flies and bugs and the ice cream parlour 4 km away. I made a commitment to never again see an ugly world.

From now on, I will the beauty in even the most seemingly unattractive places and people.

And I’ve lived by that every since.

Now, 7-8 years later, I can say that I’m happier because of that promise I made to myself. I still continue to pay attention to how people perceive things, and I’ve noticed that it’s become much more positive. Perhaps that’s because people learn to see the beauty in everything as they grow older. Perhaps that is because I’ve surrounded myself with positive people. Whatever the reason, I know that lots of people know exactly what I’m talking about. I know that there are people out there who are even better than me at seeing the beauty in everything. However, I also know that there are some people out there who are struggling to see the beauty that’s all around us.

So, I decided that once every week, I will do a different type of post. I will post an item, a person, anything. I will then write about the beauty that I see in it. I hope that this will show you the way I think about even the most unconventional things. Maybe one post won’t help you change your thinking pattern, but maybe a series of them will. Maybe you already see the beauty in everything, and it’s highly possible that you might be even better at it than me. In that case, I welcome your stories and opinions. Whatever the case may be, I hope you will enjoy it.

Look for Beauty Today starting this Tuesday.