When asked what we find beautiful we look to what we love. When a boy is asked to define what is beautiful they answer with their girlfriend. Mothers often answer with their child. There is an evident connection between what we love and what we find beautiful. Love and beauty are so interconnected that it's hard to find where one ends and the other begins.
When you love something or someone its almost as if every negative or unpleasant characteristic gets forgotten. In the hypnotizing feeling of love you learn to find beauty in their every action. The silly obnoxious way they sneeze is suddenly beautiful, not because it's no longer annoying but because you love them so dearly that every aspect is perfect. Similarly, their physical imperfections are suddenly beautiful as well, the crook in their smile, the size of their nose, or the frizz of their hair. Your love has redefined your sense of beauty. This person has become the way you judge everyone else, they are your beauty standard, your perfect ten. Love has defined what you find beautiful.
In the first thoughts packet, the very first response to love echos this concept, "love is looking at her when it's 6am and she's got her sweatshirt scrunched up around her entire face so you can only see her nose and you can't help but think you are so goddamn lucky to have her". This idea that no matter what state this person is in, you love them and that makes them beautiful. The last entry on beauty sums up this connection, "the way the individual in love means "beautiful" is more than just looks, or personality. It is meant that everything about the one that they love is more than just appealing. I believe that everyone is beautiful, but in order to see anyone's true beauty, one must love that person". Again the connection between love and beauty. There is an ability to find complete beauty only in the things you love. The beauty of everything or everyone else is dimmed by the lack of love.
In this way, love and beauty are eternally intertwined, an endless connection between loving the beautiful and love defining beauty.
*so originally I started writing this when I was reading off the calender prompt, but I was only a paragraph in when I realized the inconsistency in the prompts so I wrote a real post based off the correct prompt. But then I wanted to finish this one too, so this is just extra.
I really like how you used passages from the first thoughts packet; it brought these concepts from out in some abstract space where the opinions of great philosophers that we can only hope to aspire to be like back to our class. As for what you said about love, I totally agree. Love is the ultimate paradox: it blinds us as well as opens our eyes and our minds. Love is the ultimate inspiration. What you said about the affect that love has on our perception of beauty was certainly interesting, and I agree with that as well, but I would like to see it expanded on from the perspective of love, inquiring on how beauty alters our feelings of love. I believe that there must be a relationship where they both have similar affects on each other. Love altering beauty and beauty controlling love. Something to that effect...
ReplyDelete