Beauty

Beauty is an experience, nothing else. It is not a fixed pattern or an arrangement of features. It is something felt, a glow or a communicated sense of fineness.
~ D. H. Lawrence~

I was at work the other day working on a spread sheet of addresses that needed to be organized. When I began it was a cluttered, unorganized mass of black letters and numbers on a white background. After working for an hour or two they were all arranged in nice rows. I said out loud "How beautiful!" I quickly realized that my perception of beauty might not be shared by a passerby. His first reaction to a few lines of letters and numbers on a computer screen might not be to praise the transcendant beauty of such a cyber sight. Nonetheless, to me it was beautiful. Why? I had seen the beginning and the end product. I had put effort into it. I realized that I had found an important element of humanity's perception of beauty: The difference between the beginning and the end. A possession in your home may be quite ugly but it may represent something to you. Something from your past, your life. Something that you have put effort into to. This gives the object a quality which the most dazzling aesthetics could never give. The couple, bent low by age, wrinkled beyond recognition after 50 years of marriage may not present a stereotypical view of aesthetic beauty, but to themselves, they who have endured together, lived together, worked together, raised children together, maybe even fought each other but still love. To them the beauty of their togetherness surpasses any and all beauty which dazzles the eye.