Phoesune

“It was one of those days when it’s a minute away from snowing and there’s this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that’s the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and… this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video’s a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember… and I need to remember… Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart’s going to cave in.” – Ricky Fitts, from American Beauty

There are a large number of reasons to live our lives. We love so we lived for those we love. We have children and live for them. We desire power, money, sex and so many other things and we live to satiate our desires. What I have found is that of all the reasons to live, I have only found one that makes living wonderful. Beauty explodes around us in every particle of the universe. Oftentimes we fail to see that beauty because it is not placed in the proper context. I remember once walking into a valley that was created by a flood many years in the past. What remained was a waterfall and several large boulders at the base that had been carried by the flood waters to reside at its base. The spray of the showering waters had restore plant life back to the earth and everything was a brilliant green. The sun was reflected through the waters and made this little dale glow with a heavenly light. When I first walked around the bend and it all filled my sight I was struck for the first time with the true power of beauty. Beauty is so powerful it can transcend the physics of the human psyche. We can be transported into the reaches of whatever heaven you seek.

For whatever reason we live, beauty makes the living bearable. Beauty is free to us all and can be found everywhere. Even now as I type this, I can see the beauty in the shape of the letters and the opposing shape of the emptiness between the letters. How by simple contrasting pixels we can convey one to another about the images we have formed in our minds, how potent a single letter can be in the world, and even how small we are when placed in our context against the backdrop of the magnitude of existence. Beauty is the color of life whereas truth, love, and all the others are the context by which we view that beauty. There is beauty even in the hardships we experience. There is beauty in death and birth and suffering and sex. The noble chooses to find beauty in as much of life as it can be found by whatever limitations of mind and body are placed before him or her. To also make beautiful the world in which they live whether to craft some great thing or by simple recognition to cherish and expound on such beauty as they find before them.

Keats wrote that “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” Truth can be a terrifying, cruel, and vicious beast. Truth can be beautiful but some of the most beautiful things are lies and deceptions. Some beauty is found in the design as opposed to the outcome, but in the result the noble can see the path of history and design that produced the result and therefore see the beauty in the profane. Knowledge therefore is more closely related to beauty than truth. So it is among all other purposes of the noble to be the champion of beauty and the herald of the beautiful.

“No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.” – Oscar Wilde. I propose the opposite is true; nothing is so ugly that under certain conditions, it will not look beautiful.