I’m a sucker for beautiful things. And I don’t mean physical beauty, though I appreciate symmetry and intricacy and elegance and all those things that define physical appeal. And I hardly consider humans physically beautiful; pretty, good-looking, fine? Yes. But that’s a discussion for another day.

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Beauty. I watched a TedTalk* once that tried to define beauty. According to the speaker, real beauty isn’t so much seen as it is felt. Beauty is something you feel in your gut.

I have a list of beautiful moments. If I had any sort of talent with a camera or a painter’s brush, I would capture them, commit them to eternity on paper. But all I have are my words. So here goes.

• My cousin bravely swallowing tears back the evening of her wedding. She’d come home to change out of her dress, her husband was outside waiting and she was inside, fighting sobs while her mother smiled and soothed her.
• The 10-year-old in church with a fierce look on his face and his arms wrapped protectively around his 7-year-old autistic brother.
• My aunt cracking jokes in the front seat of her car with the 9-year old she adopted three months before. Their raucous laughter.
• The softening of my colleague’s stern face when he talks of his wife of almost 10 years. The way he smiles when she calls him.
• Light from street lamps on a deserted, tree-lined street pooling on the tarmac.
• Movie OSTs composed by James Horner.
• Gregorian chant.
• Giant turbine blades.
• Walking through elegantly laid out pipework in a process plant. If you’ve never been in a process plant, imagine a cathedral nave (high ceilings et al) made entirely of shiny steel pipes rising on either side of you to meet on pipe-racks 30 feet above you.
• And this is cliché but… kites circling lazily against a backdrop of fluffy cloud “mountains” and blue, blue sky.

What are yours? What moments do you feel in your gut?

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• Gregorian Chant: Sacred Beautiful and Universal (lavenderturquois.wordpress.com)