Beauty Anonymous

Anyone can find beauty in ordinary things: the ivory snow falling outside a foggy window on a January morning, the rainbow that appears after a thunderstorm, or the almost formulaic pink and orange hues of a sunset over the horizon. But these things come and go; seasons change, rain clouds disappear, and night eventually comes.

Growing up, I was all too familiar with the concept of change. As a child, I moved from Budapest to Pennsylvania—when I did, everything that had felt permanent and fundamental to my daily existence was suddenly transformed. I could not speak English, and the unfamiliar clamor of sounds around me left me struggling to communicate. I was forced to alter my name, remove the accents, and abandon the true pronunciation: suddenly, I was no longer Kovács Réka but Reka Kovacs, a girl I did not know or recognize.

Surrounded by the unfamiliar, I had no option but to seek comfort in steady things, things I could depend on. I sat at my desk at school, attempting to grasp fragments of my teacher’s words. Most were undecipherable. There was one hour per day, however, when I was not confused in the least. Consumed by scribbled equations on graph paper and mazes of digits that were perfectly intertwined, this hour was a...