I have written before about the wonder that is Daniel Landinsky's book A Year With Hafiz, 365 glorious, generous and searingly honest poems based on the 14th-century poet's work.In the poem for 19th October is this line...

"We subtract or add to our beauty with each movement and sound."

... which has me wondering what it would be like to live and work with this in mind.What possibilities would we bring into being if we took the beauty of everything seriously? If we paid careful and close attention in each moment to our addition to the sum total of beauty in the world, what creativity would we bring? What freedom? What dignity?And in our blindness to this question (taking beauty to be the domain only of artists or designers rather than a project of everyday living and working) what beauty are we, without knowing it, subtracting from the world and from ourselves?

Photo Credit: Simon & His Camera via Compfight cc