One Beautiful Thing A Day

I usually plan to have these recap videos done by September, but I cut this one extra close this year. What can I say? Life happened, weather changed. But what I love about this process, no matter how crammed it may feel, is that last moment; when I get to watch the full video finished for the first time, and though I see myself in fragments, they’re all still me. And I know I am not a beautiful thing— not in the way I’ve been taught to see beauty. I am not whole or unchanged, but a bit disfigured, forged. What helped me was not living every day like it was my last, but my first. I started over, every time I heard the music, or saw the world, or spoke a sentence. At the end of every day, I asked myself one simple question. What was one beautiful thing about today? Name it, describe it. What did it look, sound, feel like? And after a while, you start to look in the mirror and believe “its you.” Dance made me realize that the beautiful thing I was in search of was not out in the world, but it was right here hiding in my own past. Find something that lets you be that one ‘beautiful thing’ every day, and I promise that under all the changing weather, you will always find a way back to it. To home. To yourself.