Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. -- Roman, 3rd century BCE
Beauty is before me, and beauty behind me, above me and below me hovers the beautiful. I am surrounded by it. I am immersed in it. In my youth, I am aware of it, and, in old age, I shall walk quietly the beautiful trail. In beauty it is begun. In beauty, it is ended. -- From the Navajo Indians, N. America
I have been thinking a lot about beauty lately. What it is, and how we decide? Do we, in fact, decide at all, or are our tastes and ideas of what is beautiful so reflexive that our eyes and minds apply labels before we even have a chance to think?
Recently I’ve been thinking that maybe ‘beauty’ is too loaded a word, a concept, and have instead experimented with the idea of seeing gifts rather than categorizing things as beautiful – or not. For example, last week I was riding the train through a particularly graffiti-heavy corridor north of Philadelphia. My ‘beauty’ gauge kicked in quickly, and I started feeling the annoyance and sadness when I see buildings, walls and boxcars covered with tags, names and images that are mysterious to me in their meaning.