Beauty
Ted recently purchased a used truck to replace the Jeep he drove for 14 years. He came across one that checked many of his boxes—and at a good price. But there was a catch: it had fairly severe hail damage, mostly on one side. I joked that if it were white, it would look like a golf ball. But this truck, which we’ve already affectionately named “the ugly truckling,” sparked a conversation between us about beauty, vanity, and where truth may lie in it all.
We often hear the phrase, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and I mostly agree. However, I’d argue there is also such a thing as objective beauty, and that we, both individually and culturally, should strive toward it. But at what point does our desire to obtain and uphold beauty become vanity? We want to look presentable and surround ourselves with nice things, without becoming obsessed with appearances or perfection. We should be careful that our understanding of beauty does not become so skewed that we fail to notice subtler forms of it, the kind that emerges through imperfection.
I knew I wanted to write about Ted’s truck before I even stepped outside to photograph it. When he first brought it home, I was honestly taken aback by the sheer number of dents; my immediate reflex was to wince. But after reconsidering my feelings about it and seeing it with new eyes, I began to find beauty in the “damage.” Through my lens, I noticed how the clouds and tree branches reflected in the uneven surface of the truck swirled together in a way that reminded me of a Van Gogh painting or ripples across water. The very thing that made the truck undesirable also made it visually compelling. I took so many interesting photos that I had a hard time choosing just one for this post.
Had there been only one dent, I think it would have been harder to see beauty in it. But when there are many, they begin to form a kind of pattern, something that appears almost intentional. Suddenly, there is beauty in it. I think that’s how things we normally consider undesirable, like rust, can become beautiful in the right context.
This truck, with nothing functionally wrong with it, sat unwanted for months, likely because of its appearance: the result of weathering a storm beyond its control (and beyond its previous owner’s as well). The dents changed the truck’s appearance, but not its usefulness. It goes to show how much value we place on appearances, both in the things we own and in ourselves.
Many of us have weathered storms too. The dents may change how we’re seen—or how we see ourselves—but they do not erase usefulness, beauty, or worth.
