Collateral Beauty

Collateral beauty. It is the quiet, often fragile presence of something meaningful that emerges alongside hardship, reminding us that even in the hardest experiences, life is not entirely absent of beauty—whatever form it takes.

I first heard the phrase in a movie many years ago, and it resonated with me. I had just lost my mother and was caring for my father, who had just begun his journey with Alzheimer’s. I had moved, changed jobs, and found myself in the impossible world of trying to understand my father’s reality—where pieces of his life were slowly slipping away—and searching for ways to keep his life purposeful and joyful.

Our collateral beauty came in the form of time. Time spent driving around the state of Vermont, photographing covered bridges—a project he had started as a boy with his grandfather. We would listen to opera music (which he loved, and at the time I did not) as we drove down dirt roads, getting lost, passing fields of cows or the nuclear explosion of color worn by the trees in fall.

It appeared in the comfort of sitting beside him after riding the gondola in Stowe to the top of the mountain on a perfect summer day, looking out over the peaks of the Green Mountains he had hiked as a boy—peaks whose names he could still remember.

But most of all, it came through the quiet grace with which he lived his illness. He taught me by example—simply by living his values of a gentle and appreciative life.

Collateral beauty has since wrapped itself around me in other moments of loss—of health, of loves, of lives, and of failures. For me, it is always there. Once I learned the art of seeing my world through that lens—looking for the collateral beauty—it became difficult to miss. It can show up as a look of comfort in someone’s eyes, a call from a friend, a lesson learned, a simpler way of doing something, letting something go, or realizing what is “enough”—I learned that it doesn’t take much to fill my soul.

It also shows up for us personally. A moment of self-recognition of perseverance. Of strength. Of compassion.

It’s there. The next time you find yourself in a hard situation, when the time is right, I suspect that if you look back, you’ll see it—sitting quietly, waiting for you to notice. That moment of grace. Of hope. Of realization. Of belief.

Of beauty.

Collateral Beauty