Often we hear people muttering or sometimes wondering, “What a beauty?” At this juncture as my nagging curiosity would have it, I want to know what exactly is Beauty. How do we define a thing to be beautiful? Is it just a thing or a person or a moment or something more? Is it a feeling or a thought or a realization? Is it really abstract or tangible?
There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.
- John Kenneth Galbraith
Well, if we go by the popular words of Beauty lying in the eyes of the beholder, then there is no real way of defining it. Anything and everything is beautiful. This kind of makes perfect sense, don’t you think? To let you in on it, let me share with you a personal encounter. Today, I was walking on the main street around my neighbourhood accompanied by a few fitness enthusiasts, some folks with their pets, canines and felines and some like me, soaking in the fresh morning air just because. It was still a couple of minutes due for sun to rise. As it so happened, I turned around a corner and was caught off guard by the scintillating first rays of the morning. I felt them touching my face. I was blinded for a moment, but then what I saw was nothing short of beautiful. A clear sky above, the sun coming out of the white fluffy clouds, its rays spreading in every possible direction, illuminating our tiny world…breathtaking was the picture! It was as if a painter had created a masterpiece within minutes. A speck of his brush and voila, a beauty! And just like that, within a moment, the day had begun. I saw that. I thought it was lovely. Yes, it was beautiful but only to my eyes. I felt the beauty and boy, it made my day. Others just went on their way, acknowledging silently the arrival of another day and accordingly hustling to make it on time for prior events.
Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.
- Confucious
I know a lot of us find the sunrise beautiful, but it is not just about that. See, beauty demands to be felt in order to be seen. Beauty is everywhere if only we have the eyes to see it. It is in the flora around us, in the people who touch our lives, among the cute pets which make our world a better place, amidst the unexpected friends in our colleagues or the usual fellow commuters on the way to work. Beauty arrives to us in several shapes and sizes too. It can be as trivial as the wild flowers growing on the other side of the street you live on or as grand as the top view of the world from the Empire State building in New York! In all, it is our diverse perspectives and experiences, which make life a beautiful ride. Sure there are bumps along the road, some major setbacks too, but eventually it all adds up like a well written story. Everyone has got one.
There is nothing that makes its way more directly to the soul than beauty.
-Joseph Addison
A word of advice though, if you ever catch a glimpse of something remotely beautiful, just wait for a moment and observe it, not because it is so prim and proper but because it is so imperfectly perfect. And it is all happening to you by life itself, by the virtue of this astonishing world we live in. Nobody can time that! So go ahead and grasp its beauty. Make a mental picture of it in your head. Keep it preserved in there for the hard times. On this suggestive and friendly note, I would like to leave you all with a question of sorts (Mind over matter, eh!). Have you ever thought about what is it that you would like to see, when you look back at your life in the flashback, probably on one of the finer evenings, sipping coffee on the portico of your house, retired from the usual hustles, having done whatever needed to be done, achievements and failures, profits and losses, all scores settled? Do you feel content and peaceful? Do you feel beautiful inside? Do you feel your beauty?
—–By Kriti
