My favourite place in the world is a village up in the Amathola Mountains. It is set 30 minutes away from the small town I grew up in, Alice. Hogsback, the mountain village, is where we would go for Sunday School camps and family day trips on special weekends. It is where I first discovered that true beauty lives in nature. It is also where I discovered magic.
I remember the first time I stood in the middle of the mystical forest feeling like something was shifting inside me. I was moved emotionally and felt overwhelmed by the vastness of a place filled with tall pine trees, yet still felt like a cocoon. When I closed my eyes, I could hear the waterfalls, the birds, the leaves and the air breathing into my face. I could easily imagine that I was a character in a fairytale.
Oprah talks about a spot in her house where she likes to stand and watch the sun rise, and how each time something starts to rise in her chest, bringing her to tears. There is something about nature that doesn’t hold back on beauty. It pulls out all the tricks, sprinkles all the magic and throws in fun little accessories in the process. I think of this every time I see a rainbow. When it comes to beauty, nature knows how to properly show off, with no fear of judgement or accusations of vanity.
For many of us, it seems somewhere along the line we were told to tone it down, keep it modest. Be it our joy, our voice or our looks. Imagine telling the bougainvillea to dull its bright purple colour so that the roses don’t feel outshined in their pastel hues. I tried to think of a word in my mother tongue (isiXhosa) that directly translates to vanity. I have not been able to come up with one that fits the true meaning of the word in English.