Beauty: Transcendental and Living

Humans are drawn to phenomena that they find beautiful. People walk out in nature, people become lovers, people read stories of far-away worlds, new races, new planets, and new adventures to seek this beauty. Beauty can also be seen in music, entertainment, and life itself. Beauty is like a Spirit who permeates all phenomenality (the world of appearances, note: stepping away from ontology) and shows us more of the one who is beautiful. In speaking these words about Beauty, it is hard to ascertain what capacity in humans draws them to beauty and I need more time to develop theories about how this happens. Therefore, I want to spend the rest of this piece examining how sharing beauty is essential for human flourishing.

We have to talk a little bit about how beauty develops. All people are drawn to certain qualities (different ones for each person) that attract them to particular people, places, experiences, etc. Athletes who compete for the NBA championship and scholars who look to write the next break-through book about compassion are drawn to their activities because of the beauty of fulfillment. Some of this comes from a chemical reaction of adrenaline that each person has in response to a certain stimuli (again different for each person.) While a physical explanation serves some purpose, it does not explain why people stay engaged in certain activities when things become difficult. Athletes who have a bad game and scholars who have to deal with a crying student or a stack of poorly written exams still are drawn to their work, albeit having to deal with frustration. The capacity for each person to be passionate about a certain activity, therefore, is ideally not just a feeling, but incorporates reason, feeling, spirit, etc. A long term passion turns into a contagious beauty that captures people's attention and draws them to the joys of a certain activity. Many people remember a teacher they had who inspired them to serve the world in some specific way. It is this passion that grows through struggle and triumph that enables people to serve the world in love and bring out more of its beauty.

People develop passion and thus develop their own intellectual, spiritual, and physical gifts that serve humanity and all creation. It is important that people share this beauty with others, because beauty brings forth life in people and inspires them to want better for their own lives. However, it can be scary to share beauty with others as they may not respond in ways that we would like. Others can reject our gifts, be fearful of our conclusions, laugh at our worldview, or tell us that there is no place for us, either explicitly through word and symbol, or implicitly through their indifference to our life. We can also be tempted to stay in echo boxes, where we interact only with people who see beauty in the same ways we do. This is also a danger we have to avoid, as it closes off to the challenge of the other.

In intimacy, the other challenges us with her own experience and makes us engage the world in a different way. However, to truly see the beauty of the other, we must understand our selves in order to engage the experience of the other. We must know why we think what we do, and how that affects others. We have to know the beautiful and the ugly things about ourselves. As painful as self-examination is, it helps us to engage the other in love and mercy. However, our introspection cannot simply be an end in itself, where people reflect, think they find God, and then never seek any thing or anyone else as having something different and merciful to contribute to seeking beauty. Self-reflection must enable one to be critical without being destructive, otherwise we bring forth the ugly.

A brief point must be made about the ugly. The ugly is also transcendental, but not in the same way beauty is. Beauty is apparent in many things and has many causes. The ugly is also apparent through evil, malice, neglect, omission, etc, but the causes of the ugly are more poignant. The ugly is caused by self-hatred and sins in reaction to self-hatred. Every person has parts about themselves they don't like. All those imperfections, faults, anxieties can add up and be a heavy burden. Self-hatred has three main effects during introspection: self-harm, narcissism, and violence against the other. These effects are not mutually exclusive, but different persons tend toward different consequences of self-hatred. However, all of these consequences harm the common good and hinder people from seeing beauty. Self-hatred is the main contributor to the hindrance of seeing beauty in the world on a macro scale as it causes destruction, and on a micro scale self-hatred hinders vulnerability and discourages the sharing of beauty amongst people.

So to enable beauty to flow like a Spirit, we must stop destructive self-hatred. This is only possible as a community of people who love and serve each other. Communities of friends can gather together and share their lives with each others, and help people to grow in love, service, and mercy. Our friends build us up and help us share beauty together. Sharing is scary, because people change over time and may not like what we have to offer anymore. Especially in age where talking is not seen as beautiful, but rather productivity, fideism, and works are what's valued by Church and society, then we have to work harder to build friendships where we are better people as a result.

Thinking about beauty has many consequences, but there's one in particular I want to emphasize closing this reflection. Sexuality becomes very important in thinking about beauty. Sexuality is one example of being able to share in the beauty of someone else. Ideally it's not a distanced view of beauty which may appreciate certain characteristics of a person from afar, but rather it's a close, personal sharing between people where the whole person is engaged, good and bad. This includes physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual sharing. In searching for beauty, all people are drawn to different others. The strength in our draw to the other is that we grow from our sharing. Even physical sharing between two people enables further love as it's ideally a mutual release of stress and the ugly for people as they engage in beauty. This great pleasure gives us a reminder that as much as we have structures, life patterns, things we have to do, rules, laws, etc, that in the end what matters is how we engage the beautiful and how we enable others to share in beauty. It is this Spirit of beauty which enriches life and gives strength to our days. We ask for a world where we can love and help others see their own beauty, and in response see the beauty of others' especially in the ways where they can help us grow in love and mercy. Please God may it be so on this day of Pentecost and always.

Aristocrates