Prompt: Write about ordinary beauty.
The prompt for today, May 24th, 2026, is to write about ordinary beauty.
I think it was in The Brothers Karamazov where the father — I’m forgetting his name now — said something about there being something beautiful in every woman. He was a womanizer, and his motives weren’t entirely pure, but I think the idea can be extended.
There’s something beautiful in everything, if we know what we’re looking for.
Lately, because I’ve been growing plants — or trying to grow plants — I’ve been noticing them more. They look different to me now.
Even the buds on the trees, or the needles on the pines around our neighbourhood. Even the olive tree I’m trying to grow in my office — the little buds coming up on that. They look different.
And the beauty isn’t really on the surface of these trees or plants or leaves. It’s in how they grow, how they change, in how they are becoming.
I’ve been watching a lot of time-lapse videos of plants growing, and you can see that plants are — I know this is a strange way to put it — alive and moving and almost dancing in their growth.
So I think everything can be beautiful, if we know what we’re looking for.
Even Emi. You could step back and think about her small gains — the fact that she can get up on all fours more readily now. That’s a beautiful thing. But it’s also something very common in our world.
So maybe it’s only beautiful because I’ve given it meaning. Because I’ve placed it within a context that allows me to notice it.
And the lamps I’m working on as well — are they beautiful? Is there actual aesthetic value there?
Well, I guess beauty is an aesthetic value, but they’re beautiful because I’ve infused work and craft into them.
It feels like objects have to be infused with some sort of meaning in order to be beautiful.
Which makes me wonder why people are beautiful.
Because we don’t really—
Well, maybe we do put work into people, too.
Yeah.
So I think ordinary beauty is kind of an interesting phrase, because beauty might, in some ways, be the infusion of work. Of effort.
Huh.
There might be something in that.
Anyway, here comes the ad.
You can find this prompt and more at Letters Lounge, at www.letterslounge.com.
And of course, I’d love to hear what you’re thinking on the topic. If you have a response to this prompt, or your own ideas, please leave a comment with your thoughts, or a link to your blog, audio journal, or wherever it is you’re sharing.
I’ll talk to you tomorrow, folks.
This transcript was lightly edited with AI assistance to improve clarity and flow while preserving the original voice, phrasing, and reflective structure of the spoken entry.
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