Sublime vs. Beautiful

If you are having an existential summer, then this is for you.

A client told me that some summers were made for surviving, and thank God somebody said it.

I’m such a sucker for the “holy ordinary:” the subtle beauty in the morning dew and the quiet joy of a baby’s laugh that sometimes I forget that inspiration also exists in the extraordinary. Because for us creative, tortured souls so obsessed with paying attention to the tiny intricate beauties of the world, chaos can leave us feeling dead in the water.

And I’ll be honest, I’ve been pretty dead in the water this summer. My days hold a one- and a two-year-old, a job, a relationship, and, on good days, a social life. This summer in particular has been filled with that type of overwhelm that is constant childhood sickness, ukus (IYKYK), insomnia, sleep regressions, 5 am work calls, and the compounding feeling that I am not getting anything quite right. None of it is devastating; I get that, but bundle it all together, and it is, for a fact, exhausting. I was made to notice the details on a butterfly’s wing, damn it, not explaining, over and over again in a sleep-deprived state, why we can’t wear shoes to bed. Perhaps this will feel sweet or funny in a few years, but I’m not there yet.

Amid the chaos, I read on Instagram (eyeroll) that I am not supposed to call myself pretty when I put makeup on in front of my daughters; I am supposed to call myself fancy. That way, they will know they are always baseline beautiful; the makeup is just the zhuzh. (Don’t ask me how long I had to Google that word to find the correct spelling.)

That distinction between pretty and fancy and Soul Gum’s latest podcast has me thinking of my pre-law days. Those were the days I believed I was destined for the bar exam and my business ethics class had me studying 18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant. (Bear with me, this is relevant, I swear.)

Kant didn’t really care if you called yourself pretty or fancy (as far as I know), but he is known for differentiating between the Beautiful and the Sublime. Long story short, beauty causes calm and makes us feel comfortable; it’s a positive pleasure. The holy ordinary of dewy grass and baby cheeks. The sublime, on the other hand, evokes so much emotion that it kind of freaks us out; negative pleasure. The thrill of three hours of sleep and a deadline.

Put in ocean terms, the sunset over a beach is beautiful. But the first real wave of the winter swell, one that churns and turns the whole coastline to foam? That’s sublime.

For whatever reason, I Kant help but notice (sorry) this concept of Beautiful vs. Sublime is helping me get my creativity back in such a chaotic season. My family, the work I do, the home we have created? All of that is undeniably beautiful. It’s easy to watch and it’s simple to love.

But this season of life, how thin I am stretched, how much I am able to hold? That feels sublime. There is terror and awe. It aches, and for some reason it kind of makes my teeth hurt. But Lord, it is powerful.

I don’t think Kant was thinking of me when he was laying out his aesthetic theory: a chaos-inclined woman typing furiously on her computer at 4am.

I think he was picturing something more like thunderstorms and the Dolomites. But I can be thunder, just ask my husband, and I can be a mountain range that reaches as tall as I need.

The truth is, I can’t always write about beauty, and these days fancy rarely crosses my radar. But the vastness, the overwhelm, the sacred awe? That’s something I can work with. Next time I hold a mascara wand to my lashes, I can’t wait to tell my girls, “We are always beautiful, but today we are going to be sublime.”