CULTIVATE BEAUTY
It was the fourth home that we completely gutted, set high upon a mountaintop with views as far as the eye could see. Thirteen acres, wild as our own dreams of building a one-of-a-kind sanctuary nestled into the giant boulders, perched one mile up the winding drive.
Nearly two years of constant obsession and our home was complete. It was “installation day,” the unloading and unboxing of furnishings and found pieces hunted and gathered for this place, their exact placement distilled from hundreds of hours of drawing and dreaming, calculating and creating.
I had imagined colors and patterns, positions and scale. Beautiful things. Gazed upon. Admired. And I believed with all my heart that I had accomplished my mission.
After a grueling moving day, we joined my mama and daddy on the veranda just as the sun dipped down to the distant sea. Exhausted, we quietly ate dinner to the coos of mourning doves and the chatter of coyotes on the chase nearby. All was peaceful yet I could sense a kind of angst building in my Dad. I can still see him setting down his fork. Turning to lock his blue eyes with my brown, he lovingly spoke,“Your home is beautiful, Baby. Now live in it.”
Live. In. It. Those three words [even writing them] still make me cry—
Perhaps some of the emotion felt now, is memory of a wise and adoring daddy’s voice. But more, what is felt particularly in this season, is this overpowering sense of enduring, unending truth we can all bathe in.
Live. In. It.
—My inclination is to capitalize them for emphasis.
But their deepest meaning should be uttered more like a whisper or a prayer—
I have to ask here, how are you living today? I imagine a bit scattered and chaotic and not surprising with so much change. You can dream up all the reasons that “now” is the exception but our daily habits do grow. The things we dismiss as “temporary” work their way in and even at cellular levels become innately who we are.
So, let me ask again, how are you living today? Is it the way you want things to be, or have you simply given in?
When the overwhelming longing for peace sets in [and I have a feeling it’s setting in right about now] is your sanctuary the place you long to run from or run to?
Go ahead, be honest.
The answer won't surprise this designer who's been in more homes than I can count. Over the years the “little chaos” we allow in becomes consistent, permeating, and exhausting.
It’s difficult…no, impossible…to create a space that nurtures and heals when the tyranny of the everyday takes priority over all. In this space of angst and anxiety, we neglect our own exploration of what we find to be lovely and default to the cookie-cutter imaginings of someone else’s dream.
WHO are we if not expressed and lived in our own sacred spaces?
After those three words were laid upon me like a blessing, I took to heart that in some ways I had placed the notion of what home should look like over how humans would interact within it. Don’t get me wrong, I have never abandoned my belief that place matters, nor will I ever stop cultivating the breathtaking scene…
but that day, I began to re-imagine a new definition of “beautiful—”
in little fingers wrapped through cozy fur throws,
in joy-filled jumping on white French linen sheets,
in Great Danes taking afternoon naps in forbidden places.
Live in it.
My mission that day shifted from creating a beautiful home to cultivating the beautiful moment—not only what surrounds us, but the sacred conversation that soothes the angst and makes a way for love.
Makes a way for love. This bears repeating.
Real beauty can never be something purchased or provided but something accessed deep within. We are the lovely interiors we seek—the condition of our hearts, the quiet of our spirits, the color of our souls. The creation of this…the preservation of it even in the hard moment…is everything.
