Posts tagged beauty

As a society, it seems that we’ve become obsessed with preservation. We venture out into the world with our digital cameras and video recorders and seek to capture precious moments to keep forever, like a civilization of lepidopterologists wielding nets and chasing butterflies to pin up in our cases back home. To be sure, even in motionless death, the fragility and brilliant coloration of some of those creatures is still quite beautiful. However, their true brilliance is only fully appreciated as they effortlessly waft along through the air against a backdrop of open flowers, seeking places to land and feed for a few moments before resuming their journeys.

Our dead butterflies, our pictures and videos, serve and should be viewed as merely imperfect reminders of the true beauty of a real experience, yet they’ve slowly supplanted reality in a flurry of brighter colors, sharper sounds, and manufactured aesthetics. The true essence of something beautiful is held in its spontaneity and fleeting nature. Take the sunset, for example. While a photograph of a brilliant sunset may be enough to take one’s breath away, that feeling pales in comparison to the experience of seeing those colors gradually stain the blue horizon, seeing them deepen and grow, and then watching as the whole scene fades to black. Knowing that you will only see something once, that your experience with it is limited and soon to end, is cause for a much deeper appreciation; a feeling of which many have all but lost track.

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