Beauty.
What is beauty? What does it mean to any of us? How do we know something is beautiful when we experience it? Is beauty love? Why is beauty something different for all of us and why does it evoke different emotions in us? When I look at the world, at everything around me, there are a number of things that move me to tears, but here I want to talk about one thing that connects to so many others. I find feelings, and emotions, beautiful. Because sometimes we cannot control them. Because they drive so many of the decisions we make. Feelings are at the very base of our existence. They are complex and rarely straight-forward, they connect us to people and things. Without emotions we would have no personality, nothing to live for.
No matter who are, where we are from, what problems we have faced and how resilient we are, we all have the basic need to feel loved, to not be alone, to not feel left behind. We feel our feelings at different intensities, but they are the same emotions; grief and anger passed down through generations and terror through social hierarchy, happiness through the eyes of the stranger and love through the people you’ve known forever.
What would the world be if we dwelt on small joys and grew out of the past, making it a sweet memory of the people we were.
As human beings, we have our own share of fears we live with. One that I experience a lot is being afraid to let go. But really, like anyone else there are a cluster of others that swarm my brain. The fear of losing people, of growing up, of failure, of forgetting how wondrous and lively the world is, the beauty in fear lies within the power and intensity of it. Fear is, at times, just another outlet for our imagination. It is an emotion that explores the mind fully and shows you the parts of you no one will ever see. It amplifies the smallest things in the oceans of your mind and grows them into horrifying possibilities that terrorise you. Fear is one of the greatest, most powerful emotions we can feel, and the fact that it is also one of the most unstable, uncontrollable emotions makes us believe it is solely a ‘Negative Emotion’
All the really disgusting emotions we feel, too are part of our existence and just as beautiful. greed and lust, jealousy and pride, laze and gluttony are all at the base of human nature. They live in all of us, in some more prominent than in others. They complete us, balance us, and make us real.
What is regret? What is pain? Why do we make decisions whose outcomes we don’t accept? Why does our mind slip into delusion to hide from the rain of tears the truth will cost us? Why do we hate ourselves? Do we deserve to? The beauty of the mind is not just that it looks back on memories fondly and remembers the tiniest details of it, that no matter how much time passes the things that matter and the feelings you felt never leave you. Maybe it’s because it made us who we are now, either way, it’s an act of preservation, of protecting what we love and value the most. In that way, we aren’t all that different from the world around us.
What is anger? Why do we feel it? What causes it? Why can’t we control it at times? Why does it exist? Do we really need it? In my opinion, it is who we are, it’s our self-preservation mechanism. Our anger is the part of us that knows how much we hurt, it knows that what you have to go through is unacceptable, it knows you deserve to be treated better, your mistreatment isn’t fair. That it’s not your fault, your guilt is unnecessary. Your anger is the part of you that loves you. I read something like this before, and realised how much sense it made. Most of the time, it is sadness the feeling of being neglected, abandoned, misused, betrayal that turns into anger. Anger is beautiful, its actions sprout from your own self and yet sometimes it helps you our of the worst places. Anger saves you the pain of loneliness and shows you your worth. It is an amazing example of how strong we all really are. On the other hand, it can get out of control when you lash out. Rage in its full glory is also beautiful. It is scary, even to us because it, like Fear is untethered.
Grief means we loved fiercely, and if that is all anyone has to say about either of us in the end, we lived our best lives.
— Hermes: A touch of malice by Scarlett St. Clair.
What I find so beautiful about our mind is everything I have listed above, and that it dares to question, to ask for answers to what we don’t understand. That id demands knowledge so it can grow, and dries up without it. Growing is living. When you breathe in the world and are fascinated by it, the smell the soil, the trees, the sky, you are alive. When you look at how things work, machines, numbers, equations, structures. Or you try to understand the people everywhere, their words, soul, feelings ideas, you are attentive to true beauty, you are curious, because you see it. Really see it. The balance in everything. How, after you feel really strong emotions — Both negative and positive ones — you feel calm. How, after you bottle up your emotions and then finally let them all our, you feel peaceful, relieved, the daze after lots of tears. Because after the storm, the waters run still and clear Our emotions need to be balanced so we can live, breathe with no burdens. Balance is Freedom.
Today’s human condition needs people to open their eyes to the reality of the world to solve problems and ensure survival. But it’s not enough, not until you feel all your emotions. And eventually, after long battles, accept, yourself and others, your feelings and reality.
There is no template for what we find beautiful, but it’s a definate feelings. Something deep inside comes to life when you are overcome by beauty. Somewhere, there’s a feeling of longing, of helplessness, an ache and emptiness. Of course, beauty is experienced differently for everyone but when beauty reaches its final stage it becomes love. We feel weak and kneel before it. Our eyes fill and we resonate. A hum from within a call of inspiration. That is what beauty does, at is purest.
— Giaa-Marie Raj
