I was sitting at a bar in an airport on the east coast, a well traveled land for me, and talking to my best pal, living in the farthest away place possible. She asked me if I was happy and in a thirty-second, unexpected, interval, I fogged up my glasses and made my mask wet with my tears. And I’m not really sure why that question made me sad in the first place. Maybe because I don’t know. Maybe because I am but I wouldn’t classify it as happy. Maybe because when I feel these days, I also seem to feel the achiness that comes with living and loving and losing. This question came from a friend who is one of the most present people I have ever known. So maybe that’s what made me sad: that I can’t be with her. Eventually the only way I found I could answer that question was with security in my own unsurity. I don’t know but I am so grateful. My happiness seems to be flustered, disrupted, displaced, perhaps. It’s propelled by a deep, constant ache and when I look at it, it looks less pretty and pure than it usually does. As though someone splattered gray paint in the corners of my fresh canvas. Unexpected and kind of rude, honestly, but true, all the same. And I suppose that made me think about the way I see beauty. I know it to be imperfect and impure, yet when I see it in context with my circumstances I don’t like that so much. It takes giant wings and flighty feet to lift my eyes to a blue, sunny sky that holds a canvas grayed and scratched in corners, screamed at and cried on. So maybe beauty is rawness. Maybe it’s a true heart exposed, willingly, and sincerely to a space that holds only gentle white glows. Maybe the colors of your life make that gentle glow more extraordinary, not because it was easily and beautifully created, but because it wasn’t.