Living on autopilot is so common that we often overlook the beauty of everyday things. Automatic thinking is necessary because the work world demands a lot from us, starting with impeccable efficiency and productivity. To be effective, one must focus on one thing and ignore everything else. Yet, our ability to focus is intimately linked to our ability to relax. In other words, our capacity to contemplate beauty does not necessarily contradict modern mandates.
The quality of a spring is measured not only by its ability to contract but also to relax. The same is true for the qualities of the human psyche. A well-functioning mind is one that can both concentrate and relax, and this is where the ability to contemplate beauty comes in.
Children have a natural capacity for wonder that fades over time as socio-cultural conditioning takes hold. This ability to appreciate beauty, however, is a testament to a much deeper capacity, that of living in the present moment, suspended in time, so to speak, neither in the past nor the future. This skill becomes a feat in adulthood because it is increasingly rare. We indeed rush to complete tasks and earn money. The omnipresence of duty and utility in our daily lives has swallowed our ability to connect with what makes us alive and human, as opposed to being automatic and robotic.
The ability to identify, appreciate, and then assimilate beauty is, in a way, a means to pacify everyday life and thus generate a deep change in people and then society. If everyone learned to pause for a moment to “stop” time and simply contemplate life passing before them, we could purify ourselves and carry this beauty with us to transform what surrounds us. Beauty is not only something to be contemplated; it is primarily a transformative object for those who dwell on it. It has the potential to morally educate us and make us better.
The ability to perceive beauty is intimately linked to the beauty one possesses and cultivates deep within oneself. The inside and the outside nourish each other. To begin to develop beauty, one simply needs to learn to stop and seemingly do nothing, so that the torrent of thoughts calms down and we can begin to see things as they are, not as we wish them to be.
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