Never lose the opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting. –Emerson
Once upon a time my friend, George, emailed me and asked: ‘Did we invent beauty?’ George’s question stimulated my curiosity and as I tend to do with all such questions I ‘held it’ for some time. Over time I began to emerge some responses. I noted them in my journal. Following is some of what emerged for me as I was holding George’s question.
We humans have a natural capacity to appreciate beauty AND naming beauty is highly personal. How is it that I find nature to contain beauty? How is it that I find a painting, a sculpture, a poem, a play, certain music to be beautiful? As I thought about these things and some other things I think to be beautiful I slowly discerned a pattern that I follow.
I then discerned that I follow the same pattern when it comes to naming most things as having beauty. Here is my pattern:
I find it ‘interesting.’ I also find that I experience physical, emotional and intellectual ‘tingles’ as I experience it; at times I also experience a spiritual ‘tingle’ but this ‘tingle’ does not seem to surface with each experience. I then find it to be ‘memorable.’ And then I find that I have a desire to experience it again and when I do I find that I have a deeper experience and/or a ‘new’ experience — an ‘affirming’ ‘tingle’ or a different/new ‘tingle.’
At times, I immediately experience the ‘I find it interesting’ emerging and then I become aware of the ‘tingle.’ Later on I find myself re-imaging the experience and find that the ‘tingle’ also re-emerges. Still later on I find that I, again, seek to re-image the experience for it has become memorable; I then find that I want to have the experience again (or to have an experience that I believe would be ‘like’ or ‘similar’ to it). So, for example, I love the fall colors and will seek them out during that time of the year; I will stop and savor them and I will also drive to places where I believe they will be most revealing. I will also re-read a poem, perhaps even memorize it so I can access it whenever I so desire. I will do the same with certain plays or with certain passages that my favorite authors have penned. I will listen to the same music when I am in a certain mood. There are works of art — paintings, for example — that I have photographs of and I will look at one or more of these and re-savor them. I also have photographs of people, animals, nature scenes, and gardens that I find to be beautiful and will look at these as my mood inspires me.
I became aware, thanks to George’s question — that with each of these I follow the same pattern. And my conclusion is also the same: This is what beauty is all about or this is beautiful.
I am curious, Gentle Reader, how do you discern beauty? Do you have a pattern also?
There was an experiment conducted a number of years ago. Folks from different cultures were shown a number of photographs and were asked to choose the one that represented ‘beauty’ to them or that they would call ‘beautiful.’ One interesting thing was that each person, not matter his or her culture, chose the photo depicting ‘nature’ as the one that represented beauty to them or that they found to be the most beautiful. The other interesting thing was that each choose as the most ‘ugly’ photos that were starkly ‘geometric’ in nature — sharp line images. I am also put off by sharp line images. How about you, Gentle Reader, what types of ‘lines’ are you drawn to and what types of lines ‘put you off’? It seems true that ‘Beauty’ is, indeed, in the eye of the beholder.
In life, as in art, the beautiful moves in curves. –Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton