The Quest for Beauty
I’m going to return to the point I was making in my original essay on Creation and Appreciation, as it keeps coming back to me as a point of focus.
What if every moment of your life could be narrowed down to creating the next most perfect experience to have, and then to enjoy it, as well as the creations that already exist in the world?
I suspect that it is. We are pleasure seekers at heart. Every choice that we make is some form of perfecting life – making it more beautiful – so that it can be appreciated. It could be making the perfect breakfast out of ingredients that are available, within the time constraints that you have and sitting down to enjoy it. It may be that reading the paper while you eat, though it distracts you from the pure enjoyment of the food, is what you prefer to do. Each of these perfection choices tends to be so fast as to appear automated, if they are even noticed. But they are each choices and collectively the end result IS the sum of what you chose. It may also be true that your intent to get to work on time minimizes your full enjoyment of the pleasure of that reading/eating experience, but that intent to be on time is also a choice that is aligned with a larger perspective of what is perfect. Any choices that become repetitive and ordinary, like eating breakfast, tying your shoes or going to work, may drift into habits and eventually, perhaps, into instinct. You will then lose both the recognition that it is a choice, and perhaps the appreciation of that which you manifested as a result of your choice. …