Wednesday, March 06, 2024

Remember: You are beautiful

Pause for an important message
London, ON
March 2024
This photo originally shared on Instagram

I’m the last person to applaud the appearance of graffiti*.

It’s a form of insidious vandalism that drags down neighbourhoods and opens the door to the kinds of breakdowns in the urban and community fabric that make us want to live anywhere else.

But I’m going to make an ever-so-slight exception this time.

I found this particular example under a bridge beside a creek through the woods not far from our home. The smooth concrete walls are frequent targets of the taggers, and the cat-and-mouse game between paint and primer has been playing out for as long as we’ve lived here.

I generally ignore it when new tags show up, figuring it won’t take long for the forces of good to do their thing. But this one stopped me in my tracks.

Because we are each, indeed, beautiful in our own way. And sometimes we need to be reminded of it.

Don’t get me wrong: there are better ways and places to share an inspirational message. But in a world where inspiration is in short supply to begin with, we should amplify the sentiment whenever we happen to see it.

Now wouldn’t that be a beautiful thing?

* I appreciate the blurred-line relationship between graffiti and art. I also appreciate that lots of street artists are immensely talented, and their work deserves to be celebrated alongside that of any other artists working in any other medium. I draw a huge distinction between these artists and those whose work amounts to little more than random squiggly tagging with whatever they managed to shoplift from the closest Canadian Tire. Thanks to the investments of the former kind, our city is blessed with a richly diverse mix of murals and related works. The world needs more of that kind of art.

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