To Become Beautiful

For Saturday, August 12: Name and claim what gives you joy.

Inspired by conversations with a recent house guest, I revisited the words of June Jordan, a personal hero, on the connection between truth and beauty:

To tell the truth is to become beautiful, to begin to love yourself, value yourself. And that's political, in its most profound way.
--June Jordan

Sometimes truths are described as "ugly," or "bitter." In this context, though, June Jordan speaks of personal truth, the eternal truth that you are, even though others try to negate you. In other words, that you exist and are beautiful and worthy, even though racism, sexism and heterosexism may work to undermine your confidence. For a bisexual African-American woman in her time, her words were "worry words" for a society that regarded her as anything but beautiful.

To speak your personal truth is to be counter-cultural, even today. It requires a level of self-love that involves body, mind, spirit and speech; and yet, we are dynamic beings whose bodies, emotions and moods change. Our creeping doubts about our abilities obscure the deep truth that we know about ourselves. In those times when we do feel in touch with our personal truth, we have to grasp and hold on to it tightly.

Perhaps another way of saying, "personal truth" is, "inner joy." Our inner joy is the truth of who we are, and getting in touch with this joy makes us beautiful.

To speak of our inner joy, to give it a name and claim it, might very well be the great project of our lives.

From Carl Sandburg:

Let a joy keep you.
Reach out your hands
And take it when it runs by,
...
Joy always,
Joy everywhere—
Let joy kill you!
Keep away from the little deaths.