Last week, as I was preparing my slides for my weekly Tutorials that I teach at Notre Dame and ACU, I went searching for some images to include (I like to include some visual content in my slides to get the students a bit more engaged with the content). This week, by some grace, the topic for my classes at both universities overlapped, so I was able to come up with some ideas that I could use for both. The topic in question – beauty.

So, as usual, I went to Google Images and punched in a key term to find a few images that could link up well with the content on the slides. I started with ‘beauty.’ As soon as I saw the results, I said to myself and aloud to the empty room I was in “nope, I’m using my own images.” 

You know what came up when I looked up beauty? Images of beauty products, and images of women. And it was these search results that sparked the idea for the crux of my lesson this week.

This world has such a superficial understanding of beauty. All people seem to see is the exterior, that beauty which is on the outside. They truly take beauty at face value – because they only see how a person or a thing looks. They do not see that interior beauty that resides within.

This is especially true in the consideration of people. Christ says in the Gospel of Matthew “They look, but they do not see.” Oftentimes, we look at someone, but we do not see them. We do not see them for who they truly are. We look at their superficial features, but we do not see past this. We do not see that interior beauty that lies within their heart, their soul.

When we look for a partner in life, for a future spouse, so many of us get caught up in idealism. We come up with a perfect person in our mind, and then either attempt to search them out, or, failing that, impose that ideal on another. What we must come to understand is that there is no ‘perfect person.’ There have only ever been two truly perfect people in the whole of human existence – Jesus Christ, and the Blessed Virgin Mary. Not one of us living today is perfect. And while we can attempt to impose our ideals upon another, chances are that person is always going to fall short in some way of the perfection that we have set our minds and hearts to.

Oftentimes, when we traverse this path, we fall in love with the idea of a person, rather than the person themselves. We fall in love with the idea of who they could be. We don’t fall in love with who they are. We do not actually see them. We just see a version of them that we want them to be. The harsh truth of this is that it is not reality – it is delusion. And when we become so fixated on such a delusion, we’re only going to continue to damage and tear apart our own hearts.

We all have a desire in our hearts to be seen. We have a desire for others to see us for who we truly are, not for who they want us to be. And that desire to be seen is not just a desire to be seen in the joy and glory of life, in our moments of elation and light, but also in our hurt, in the pains and darkness of life, in our brokenness.

So many of us are broken. So many of us are hurting in some way. So many of us carry wounds that run deep within our hearts and souls. But because this world has such a superficial understanding of beauty, because this world only looks, people do not see those wounds that we carry. People do not see how broken we truly are. And so, we are often left to deal with that pain, that hurt, that brokenness, alone. And that loneliness is harsh. It is isolating, debilitating, overwhelming, draining. 

Oftentimes, we will try to hide that pain, that brokenness, because we have been conditioned by the world to believe that it is ugly – that by the sheer fact of experiencing such a thing we are made ugly. But in hiding it, we are only lying to ourselves. We are living a lie. Because what we are doing is attempting to convince ourselves that this reality that lies within us does not exist. But it does. It is very real. And it is not just going to disappear because we try to pretend it isn’t there. 

This is like putting makeup on to hide a blemish. I know people are probably going to disagree with this point, but I’m not afraid to make it regardless. Makeup is kind of like a mask. When we put it on, we are practically hiding our true selves. We might say that we wear makeup to appear more beautiful. But we have already been created beautiful. Our natural beauty is what radiates for the entirety of our lifespan – it is a beauty that has been bestowed upon us by God, who has created us in His Image and likeness. And if God is the perfection of all beauty, and we are created in His Image, then we too are beautiful, without having to go to the added lengths of putting on makeup.

In the same way, God has created us with a rational mind, and a heart and a soul that feels emotion. This emotion is what allows us to perceive, to appreciate, and to create, particularly when it comes to beauty. We can perceive beauty through our rational minds, appreciate it, and feel a desire in us to share that beauty with others. We thus use creativity, a quality of God’s that He has instilled in us in creating us, to express that beauty, be it through paintings, sculptures, music, or any form of art. It is what allows us to take that beauty which transforms our own hearts and share it with others in the hope that it will also transform theirs.

There is, therefore, nothing wrong with that emotion. There is nothing wrong with feeling emotion. This world, in its superficial understanding of the human person, seems to have conditioned us to believe that certain emotions are ‘wrong’ or ‘negative’ or ‘problematic’ and that we shouldn’t feel those emotions – that they are only going to be detrimental to us. This is particularly true of emotions relative to hurt and brokenness, to an interior pain we feel, an interior suffering that many fail to truly see, because they have become so blinded by the superficial standards of this world.

It is only in feeling such emotions, and in going through such experiences of brokenness and darkness, that we are truly able to appreciate the light and beauty. And often it is only in enduring such darkness, such brokenness, that we are able to truly appreciate and understand what others are silently going through, and to truly see them. 

Many of us are silently enduring. There is a beauty in endurance in spite of brokenness, there truly is. But that doesn’t mean we should have to always endure such brokenness, such pain, such darkness, alone. We shouldn’t have to hide who we are in all our ugliness, in all our brokenness. 

When we do this – when we try to run from the pain or push it down and pretend it isn’t there – we end up doing greater damage, not only to ourselves but to those around us. It is absolutely true that hurt people hurt people, and broken people break others. We see this on a grand scale in global conflicts, where people who are likely deeply wounded themselves go and wage war and hurt countless others. But we also see it on a more personal level when those who are deeply wounded inflict wounds on others, whether they realise they’re doing it or not.

We run from the pain or push it down because there is no one there who truly sees us. And the loneliness of dealing with that pain alone is too much for us to handle. We long to be seen, but there seem to be so few people in the world who know how to see. And so those wounds continue to bleed, even though we ‘think’ we have fixed them. And this affects our capacity to love, to truly love, and to receive the love others seek to give to us. 

This week, I asked my students to take a minute to think of an experience of beauty they have had, and then to share that with the class. Each one gave me an experience that I could tell was from the heart, an experience that had clearly transformed their heart in some way. I then told them about my own experiences of beauty, and how my perception of beauty has to some degree changed over time.

I truly believe that one of the most sincere and truest forms of beauty is found in friendship. It is found in that kind of friendship in which one person truly sees the other. They see them in all their woundedness, in all their brokenness, and they choose to love them regardless. When people hear the word ‘love,’ they will often automatically think of some kind of romantic love – again, this is a product of the superficial world in which we live. But the kind of love I speak of here is not a romantic love. It is a higher form of love, a truer kind of love. It is that love which requires us to give of ourselves, to be open to being hurt in spite of the love that we seek to give. It is that love in which we give – we give all of who we are – not for the sake of attaining something in return, but simply for the sake of giving and loving. It is a truly self-sacrificial kind of a love, that love which Christ Himself demonstrates for us on the Cross and calls us to imitate – that agape love. 

Beauty, love, and friendship are inherently linked. Love and friendship go hand-in-hand. Love is an essential quality of the truest form of friendship, and it is that love in friendship in which beauty is revealed. There is a true beauty in being able to see another and to choose to love them regardless of their brokenness, their shortcomings, or their imperfections. Our imperfections are what make us unique, and there is a real beauty in that, too. We are perfectly imperfect. And when we recognise that another’s imperfections are actually beautiful, it is only then that we can begin to truly see a person and to recognise their interior beauty – that beauty which is most important. 

If I were to put this all into a short summative statement, it would be this:

To be seen is to be loved. And to be loved is to be seen.

It is only when we see someone that we can truly love them for all that they are. So, look beyond the surface. Look beyond and see. Because when we see, we can appreciate the beauty in another, the beauty that God has instilled in them by virtue of their very creation, of their very existence. Church of England priest Charles Kingsley once said that “beauty is God’s handwriting.” Each one of us is an integral part of God’s book of life. Let us appreciate the beauty in every chapter that we encounter throughout our lives.

There is beauty all around us, if only we have the eyes to see.