Have you seen the show Nailed It? I used to watch regularly, feeling quite smug about my comparative baking skills. I would sit there shocked by how far off their cake sculptures were from the original. Even more so, I was amazed by the contestants’ unwillingness to follow the recipe instructions or truly observe the model cakes before them.
In contrast, I am amazed by all of Amaury Guichon’s videos. The founder of the School of Chocolate and host of the show with the same name has a number of videos detailing his work to build edible sculptures. Though the audience sees quick takes between steps, the pieces take hours if not days to construct. Add to that the necessary preplanning for each project and years of building the skill set to do it all.
If you were to compare the two, a cake by the amateur baker and the professional, you would see a clear difference. If the two were placed for sale, you would likely and reasonably expect to pay more for Guichon’s cake. It is just more beautiful, and not to mention tastes better. Of course it should cost more.
To say that beautiful things should cost more is not to speak of spending money on cosmetics. I don’t even mean for you to think at all about how you look (but maybe you can look within). It is to say that it takes work to get to a beautiful result, to create beauty around you. It takes more labor to tend to a garden, more time to carve marble. Even to maintain a clean home requires more effort than to let things pile up. And think of the sacrifices of maintaining healthy relationships, or conditioning ourselves to live with hope, or creating the life we truly desire. Beauty takes more time, effort, labor, materials, more sacrifice. It just costs more, and that is part of why we value it so.
I will leave it to you to define what beauty means to you in your own life and how you choose to achieve it. But I want to know, “What does it take for you to create beauty in your life?”
“Whenever you are creating beauty around you, you are restoring your own soul.”
Alice Walker
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