I was on maternity leave, listening to the radio and folding mountains of laundry when I first heard these words…
beauty will save the world
My mind boggled. What? Beauty will save the world? I had shivers. My heart strained towards something I didn’t understand. How could beauty possibly save anything?
The words were first written by Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky and later quoted by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970. He said that Dostoyevsky's words were "not simply a careless phrase, but a prophecy.”
I believe this was indeed a prophecy. After decades working with children, I get it.
It is the beauty we are capable of when we are grounded in nature and connected to the divine.
It is the beauty we create when we listen to our hearts and follow our dreams, the blueprints of our soul.
Every time someone contributes this beauty, we evolve as a species, we vibrate at a higher frequency and we are a step closer to healing humanity and the Earth. As this beauty exponentially increases, we reach a tipping point, a critical mass of restorative energy.
Beauty has and will continue to topple corrupt governments, end wars, bring down walls, solve global warming and find solutions to heal our planet. It feeds the hungry, ends abuse, reconciles families, mends hearts and allows love to bloom.
This beauty is our divine expression.
When we are aware of this, we become alchemists.
Alchemists are grounded in nature and connected to the divine. The beauty they make is the most powerful force.
It will save the world.
Kids come into this world aware of this magic. They have strong bonds to the Earth and the divine. Our job as parents, caregivers and teachers, is to recognize and nurture these bonds.
We all knew this once. But society taught us to believe otherwise.
So… many of us embark on a journey to rediscover what we once knew. Spirit is always calling us back to the truth of ourselves… back to our dreams, to the beauty we have to offer.
But it doesn’t have to be this way for our kids…
I want my children, all children, to know they are alchemists, even if the world sometimes tells them otherwise.
I want all children to become who they are meant to be.
Kids need to know that the world needs them. They need to know that their dreams are important. More than important, essential.
Their gifts are powerful, but they are also fragile.
Our job is not to mold children, but to discover who they are. When we have fixed ideas and expectations about who we want them to be, they may spend a very long time, perhaps their whole lives, wanting to be someone else. Anxiety, depression, unhappiness and addictions can be the result. Their gifts are lost. Their beauty hidden, even to themselves. Like a lost piece of a grand puzzle. Then the world suffers a little more…
In Top 5 Regrets of the Dying, palliative caregiver, Bronnie Ware shares that the No.1 regret expressed is: "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."
Our children are free to be alchemists when we release expectations of who they should and should not be.
We live in a world where our children are bombarded with images of what they should look like and what they should achieve to be successful, loved and happy. So our job is even more crucial. They need to know that the world needs the gifts that only they have to offer. They need to know that they are powerful alchemists.
As author and activist Glennon Doyle says, “We don’t need to be more pleasant, normal or convenient, we just need to be ourselves. We need to save ourselves because we need to save the world.”
For some alchemists, saving the world will take the form of activism. They will join movements. They will start movements.
But others will bring about innovation, transformation and renewal of the Earth and humanity by simply doing what they love. This will create the beauty that will transcend fear and the many challenges we face.
My hope is that you and your kids to make all kinds of beauty.
Together, we will save the world.
With love,
Valerie
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