Beauty, as an aesthetic quality of nature, can never be made manifest. Like light, beauty is a probabilistic essence which depends wholly on observation. It can be conceptualized within a context of culture or independent experience of an individual, but its substance is too broad; without perspective, a point of comparison, a context, the elements of beauty are random.
The Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum observation theorizes that the energy which condenses into matter exists probabilistically until it is observed, the best concept science can come up with to define non-substance. It is the act of observation (measurement) through which particles become manifest. Some unsettling and interesting tests have been conducted to prove this.
As we appreciate beauty it manifests within us. A sunset is a stream of photons. We’re biologically capable of seeing the particles sway with a particular frequency. Our envelope of nitrogen and oxygen acts as a prism; the cells in my eye drink photons that spill through cumulus-nimbus eruptions. From my perspective, the prism paints the clouds. Interesting images of indigo intercede along the horizon as reflections of red rally in pursuit.
Captured within the windows of the mind, a reality observed, recorded, and appreciated anticipates the miracle: I’m lucky to exist as a sentient organism capable of seeing this splendor!
As the attitude of appreciation becomes habit, life radiates with boundless beauty, even from within the heart of tragedy. As the Self’s perspective encompasses greater distances, one can almost dissolve into the role of detached observer.
In interacting with others, a desire sparks to be as beautiful an experience for him or her as possible. We who love beauty become that which enlivens other perspectives. We cherish the perspective our neighbor experiences more than our own. We love our neighbor as our Self.
As the attitude of appreciation is manifested by my individual will, it transfigures the limits of individual human experience. I’ve been given the opportunity to enliven the lives of those souls with whom I interact. I’ve been allotted 2.52461^9 seconds if I’ve been allotted eighty years, 1.57788^9 matured beyond the anomaly of a searching adolescent. I cannot wrap my mind around this number of opportunities I’ve been given to share triumphs and tragedies with other transients, passed perspectives magnifying our communal appreciation of this moment of now.
The specificity of whom I am becoming is required for this transfiguration to take place; in this aspect, the Brahma/ Atman theories in Eastern religions fall short. God created each of us as “strange loops” of feedback, which develop distinct characteristics we conceptualize as personalities. A universe which has bloomed 6.6 billion unique feedback loops will somehow retain these even after biological functioning within an individual node ceases.
As the steward of my node, it is my charge to transfigure every aspect of experience into a memory of lasting beauty. In manifesting passed moments through memory, are those which I cherish despite stinging regret for my behaviors any less precious than those I cherish for their erupting joy? Is either, in its unique essence, filled with any less beauty?
