Beauty Will Save The World

There is nothing ordinary about the world. The veil of mediocrity is lifted from our eyes in gazing upon something as simple as color. Yellow warms, sunlight of the new day, caressing the concrete beneath our feet, slipping silently between clouds and leaves, illuminating the mind as much as any physical object within our view. Orange, peeled from the juicy flesh of an afternoon treat, invites us to take more than a minute to fill only our bellies but also the soul, starved of the nourishment needed to feel actually alive. Red it was said during the Middle Ages, the color of the sublime, communicates a greatness beyond calculation, at times associated with the idea of god, expressed effortlessly and most poignantly for all to see in nature itself: the budding of a rose, blood, the warmth and wrath of fire.

If the intimacy of connection between ethics and aesthetics sounds strange to our ears, it is only because we have been hurt by life, and thus forgotten: beauty pulls us out of ourselves. Beauty, Dostoevsky said, will save the world. Kindness grows again like seeds from within the soil of the soul through nothing more than observance. There is no trick or technique to be taught. Real noticing happens, usually when we are stopped for a moment, looking, listening, breathing, being. Not even the melodies of a man-made song are required. Sound itself will suffice, the mourning dove in her tree, the wind, the rustling of leaves. The aroma of life fills the air, each and every night and day, the ability to taste life, and the sacred act of touching another. Beholding, beauty, is to be held, gently, in the moment that now is, with nothing else to do and nowhere else to be.