grab onto the ankles of happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt

A little while back, I was visiting a career counselor for advice on what the heck to do with my life. (I still have no clue. I am just not as concerned about figuring it all out right now.) And as we discussed what things I valued most, aesthetics always came to the top of the list.

As Katie said one day, "Erika just likes pretty things!"

Although at first I wanted to shy away from that claim -- it seems so shallow and...unrealistic! And ridiculous! -- upon further contemplation I have decided there is nothing shameful about loving what is beautiful and desiring to surround yourself with it. There's just something about beauty that breaks your heart and stitches it back together at the same time. Beauty can lighten the darkest of days and offer comfort when all seems hideous and hopeless. I am a firm believer that there is beauty and wonder in everything this world has to offer. And I want to enjoy it all.

"In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real.

To devote yourself to the creation and enjoyment of beauty, then, can be a serious business -- not always a means of escaping reality, but sometimes a means of holding on to the real when everything else is flaking away into...rhetoric and plot...

You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight."

"This is not selfishness, but obligation."

Thanks Liz. Eat, Pray, Love. An old favourite. Definitely a must read.