Issue No. 43

When you look at a flower, it does what it is meant to do: it grows, blossoms, and caters to the needs of busy bees, other insects, and animals. It doesn't boast anything beyond that. And in its own way, it is beautiful.

When you look at a child, it does what children do: it laughs, cries, runs, and looks into your eyes. They are little explorers, absorbing the world. Blank slates, waiting to be nurtured with ideas and experiences. And for that, they are beautiful.

When you look at the sky in the morning, the stars at night, or the sunset at the beach, nature seems to do what it's meant to do: to rise, to fall, and to come back once more. The light caresses our skin and nourishes our brains. It's as if we are built to receive it. The moon and the stars comfort us on dark evenings, reminding us that they are alive. And for that, they are beautiful.

None of these things scream for attention, for they are simply doing what nature has allowed them to do without malicious intent, without anything extra. They are what they are because the compendium of evolutionary interactions between various species, living and nonliving, has allowed it. In a sense, everything that exists is a result of everything that was. Nothing can exist out of nothingness. It's a product of a force from before or behind it.

Think about it deeply: why do we say something is beautiful? What makes it beautiful? Is it symmetry? The absence of noise and overloading sensory elements? Simplicity? Patterns and rhythm? Perhaps certain shapes, like the curvature of the human body? The texture of something soft? There are many ways to interpret beauty and relate it to a certain phenomenon, even with the highest precision study. But none of these answers why they are beautiful.

Our modern interpretation of beauty is pleasure and aesthetic stimulation, driven by a suffocating lifestyle that provides no space for meaningful exploration. There is beauty around us, like the examples I gave above, but we live so fast and in isolation that we often don't notice it.

That's exactly why they say, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." No one beholds with an eye that can truly see anymore because our eyes are glued to screens. Our ears are deafened by wireless earbuds, our hands and bodies are filled with luxury and goods, our mouths with junk food, our minds with addictive stimulants, perversion, and lust. How can you expect such an entity to truly see the beauty around them?

When you find a meaningful moment to pause and do nothing, observe the world around you. Become a true observer of life. What you see will never appear again exactly as it does in that moment; it vanishes as quickly as it comes.

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Until next week,