What is beautiful?

Color. Emotion. Expression. Peace, wonder, excitement, love. Feeling. The first days of summer, that one perfect sunset, the design a flock of geese make in the sky. Discovery. Honesty. Purity. A full moon. Laughter, music, dance. Finding the Big Dipper on a starry night, since that seems to be the only constellation anybody knows of. These are some of the simple splendors, the obvious ones; beautiful to the naked eye.

Then there are the complicated beauties, the ones entangled with controversy and grey area. The beauty is beneath layers of pain and struggle, waiting to be discovered by someone who cares. Yes, there is beauty in simplicity, but it also exists in a much deeper and more profound way.

I think a broken person is more stunning than any of these simple beauties combined. Someone who is torn apart, ravaged by their past, wanting to be better than they were. There is such strength in that picture, the beauty of a destroyed flower in the first stages of regrowth. It’s a sign of hope to those of us watching the rebirth, a message that there is always another chance, always a reason to have faith.

Watching a broken spirit find new life is like watching a Phoenix rise from the ashes: miraculous, breathtaking and inspiring. Seeing them pick themselves up from a past that could have destroyed them, watching them soar with new hope is an incredibly beautiful feat that only the strong can accomplish.

Beauty is all around us, but the deepest kind lies in the souls of those who have overcome.