Loaded in that question are many interpretations. First, one could ask "What does beautiful mean?" There is also "What makes something beautiful?" or "What things are beautiful?" According to the dictionary, as a adjective, beautiful is:
1. having beauty; having qualities that give great pleasure or satisfaction to see, hear, think about, etc.; delighting the senses or mind: a beautiful dress; a beautiful speech.
2. excellent of its kind: a beautiful putt on the seventh hole; The chef served us a beautiful roast of beef.
3. wonderful; very pleasing or satisfying.
Everyone wonders, at some point or another, about their own definition of beauty. It seems society has standards for beauty that change by the moment. I prefer to ignore those as it seems silly to me that standards so fleeting are so highly valued by the masses. That does not mean that there aren't SOME aspects of current pop culture that I find highly attractive to say the least. I'm certain I'm not alone and that most men and women could say the same. In fact, a female friend and I were having a conversation about admiration the other day. It's unavoidable that we notice those things, people, or places that give us pleasure to think about, hear, taste, smell, feel, or look at. A soft blanket, a burning candle, the woodsy taste of chamomile tea, Debussy, that warm feeling in the morning when your sheets are a PART of your skin and your eyelids are rose petals that seem to flutter on their own. These things, and so much more, are beautiful to me.
Of course, we all question our own beauty too. Now I say this, not because I feel that we are all inherently vain but, because I think we all desire to give pleasure or satisfaction; to be excellent of our own kind; to be very pleasing. It's human nature to want to be such for others. To be considered an "excellent specimen" of human being is an honor that people strive for all of their lives. Not just physically, of course, but intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. All of those things draw people in whether they realize it or not.
If it was all about seeing, then the occipital lobe of our brain would be bigger and centrally located. Sight is almost completely compartmentalized from the other senses. You can't smell or taste, either in their entirety, one without the other. You can't experience sound as God meant for you to without being able to experience vibration on some minute, tactile level. That information in itself tells me a little bit about what God values as important, and, in a sense, what WE should value. Still, we are creatures of habit and we don't exactly walk around tasting and touching each other. . .
Beauty is the face we want to see reflected in the mirror. It is the stimulating conversation we want to have. It is the witty remark we want to make. It is the intellectual debate we want to win.
ReplyDeleteIt is the things in society we value. The things we want people to see in the one way mirror people have into our lives.
We look at beauty and pray to God, when people look at us, that is what they see.