This is the official kickoff of a new category for me so I thought I would delve into the origin of the title. Here is what I found:

Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder This saying first appeared in the 3rd century BC in Greek. It didn’t appear in its current form in print until the 19th century, but in the meantime there were various written forms that expressed much the same thought.

Shakespeare expressed a similar sentiment in Love’s Labours Lost, 1588: Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean, Needs not the painted flourish of your praise: Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye, Not utter’d by base sale of chapmen’s tongues

Benjamin Franklin, in Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1741, wrote: Beauty, like supreme dominion Is but supported by opinion David Hume’s Essays, Moral and Political, 1742, include: “Beauty in things exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.” The person who is widely credited with coining the saying in its current form is Margaret Wolfe Hungerford (née Hamilton), who wrote many books, often under the pseudonym of ‘The Duchess’. In Molly Bawn, 1878, there’s the line “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, which is the earliest citation of it that I can find in print.

I intend to use the category as one of my “right brain” activities. As mentioned before I am on a pilgrimage to try and be a more creative person in my final years. Part of that is looking at things from a different perspective.  Instead of just looking at life and things from my usual analytical point of view I want to see look for the beauty within ordinary things.  This is a stretch for me.

Let me explain the banner above. The “slice of life” picture for you who have not already seen is of the Mona Lisa and her distinctive smile. The lower saying is mine and it conveys that sometimes I will be making my form of beauty where it might not already exist.

Okay, this will the the only post in this category that is so “wordy”. I promise that from here on out I will leave the interpretations for you to discover yourself.