beauty

i've been thinking about beauty today.
why it's so important to me.
i was sitting outside reading eat pray love, and i read this:

"in a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. only artistic excellence is incorruptible. pleasure cannot be bargained down... to devote yourself to the creation and enjoyment of beauty, then, can be a serious business--not always necessarily a means of escaping reality, but sometimes a means of holding on to the real when everything else is flaking away into... rhetoric and plot."

we are achievers. we work hard to have good grades. when we graduate, we'll work hard to graduate again. and then we'll work hard to make money. then we'll work hard to preserve relationships.
so where's the point when these actions tie with emotion? when we live them, and not just do them?
when we see the beauty in it.
beauty is the link between human action and humanity. we weren't created to be machines. we were created to enjoy.
so while we're getting good grades, let's notice the color of the lines on our notebook paper.
let's relish the sound of the rain on the school roof and laugh when it leaks and drops fall on your head in the hallway.
and keep doing that through the rest of our lives.
it may seem that this beauty is a sad attempt for an idealistic reality.
ah, but it's not.
it's the only reality.
governments. friendships. families. minds. careers. financial statuses. transcripts.
all can be broken.
but your favorite song? you can still sing it.
the flowers in your garden? they can still bloom.
a smile? you can still make one.
and if all is lost, and you can't find any of those things,
the sun will still come up in the morning.

sometimes you won't even want to see the sun.

so that's when you find the beauty in the shadows.
beauty isn't always happiness. not at all. have you ever been incredibly sad, and looked at the window and noticed how delicately the raindrops stick and then flow together?
have you ever studied a picasso painting?
have you ever finished a book?
it's possible to feel simultaneously full of beauty, but at a loss of something else.

life is about the color of raindrops.
the sound of a child's smile.
the look of that one person's eyes.
the texture of a painting.
the smooth creaminess of yogurt.
the woody, clean, and unabashed smell of a real book.
the rhythmic tap of a pencil on a desk.
and the way the trees look in the nighttime.


so, blog resolve?

share beauty.
but share honesty.
life isn't perfect.
but imperfections have always been the most beautiful, anyway.