Beauty!

In the movie, George climbs a tree and screams "Beauty, L'espoir, Vérité, Trust, Joy, Beauty, Truth" and his father explains "He's declaring the eternal Yes" while the vicar is engrossed in sweetening his tea. Lucy meanwhile escapes her gossiping friends and ends up standing in a field of waist-high wheat. George sees her, walks directly to her and kisses her... Florence is in the distance, Puccini opera is playing and the Sunshine is replaced by rain at the end. George runs home in spite of it.

I wanted awesome simplicity and I realized what I looked forward to besides what I need to exist is : beauty. So I guess I'm looking for a model, a painting, a photograph, sweet music, a wedding, designer clothes, culture, ...? They are clues and signs of what we want to be beautiful.

The odd ball father and son in the movie clip's free spirited proclamation of the eternal "Yes" and earlier the father Mr. Emerson says "I don't care what I see outside. My vision is within! Here is where the birds sing! Here is where the sky is blue!" while poking his heart with a fork. This outlook** is close to the kind of beauty I seek. 

My desire for beauty almost died and I digressed along with it. Too many compromises, disillusions, disappointments, insurmountable odds, so many requirements, debt, failure, hard times seemed to tell me everything is no. Even today people wisely tell me: make do, lower your requirements, surrender to fate, your dreams are too unrealistic, there is no magic, everything is a mirage, so just make do. And I am content to make the most of what I have but contentment does not mean I stop looking for beauty in my life.

While I was in prison, in the hospital, embattled, disappointed, afraid, lonely, hopeless, desperate... I see beauty in all of it. It's the process, the journey, the anticipation that life exists even in the darkness.

To illustrate, I return to the picture of the earth taken from the moon: a magical, blue marble in the vast darkness of space where we have some time to make beauty out of nothing. That is why children are magical. We do hardly anything and life appears with all the newness and hope of a better future. 

The moment children (or anything we think we achieved) becomes some sort of trophy or raw material for our manipulation, and the process of growth stagnates. The process of life is beautiful and exists despite the mistakes and harm we often create. Discovering this during the down times is what happened to me. 

**Please see my comment on the use of the word outlook.