Today is National Make Life Beautiful Day, and I couldn’t let it pass without writing about it (at least a little—it’s been a loooong day). After writing about seeing the beauty around you, the idea has taken hold of my mind. “Make life beautiful” struck me because you’re not just looking for what’s there, you’re creating it. You’re using your free agency, your human spirit to take something that might not be obviously beautiful—that might even be grim and ugly—and creating beauty where there is none.

That’s remarkable. It’s…world-changing.

How to Make Life Beautiful

So how do you make life beautiful when it’s anything but? I don’t know, not really, but here are a few ideas. Send me any thoughts you have; I have a feeling that they’ll come in handy for all of us.

• Focus on the good. Whether it’s good news, a good story. Anything good. Latch onto it.
• See the beauty around you. It’s there, I promise; just look.
• Create something. Art, music, stories (my personal favorite). Creation is a human act. We’ve been doing it for millennia. It inspires and beautifies. It raises us up.
• Take care of yourself. I have a friend who, when she starts to feel anxious or out of sorts, she takes care of her outer self because if she can look in the mirror and like what she sees, then maybe it’s not all that bad. This might mean putting on makeup (I loathe makeup, so I might straighten my hair or do my fingernails).

If you can’t find beauty, create it. Make a little cocoon of joy and loveliness around you.

Choose Joy.

—A