Riding the Wave

I fell in love with beauty.

We visited Paris over the weekend. There is such a timelessness about this city. With steps spurred by the abundance of refreshing visages I was swept into the arms of aesthetics. Like water in the desert, I drank deeply through my eyes.

Beauty does that to me. It’s very important. Just as some thirst for sunshine, I thirst for aesthetics. Always a visual person I notice very much what is around me. But, it goes further than that. To me, to feast on beauty is to fill the corners of my heart. It is not that a sunset doesn’t do it or those first blossoms of spring as most certainly they too quench that thirst. But there is something special when beauty is created by human touch, ingenuity, imagination, focus and skill. All blended together, holding the light of balance and the stillness of awe a ‘rightness’ is created. When an object feels ‘right’ it looks beautiful. A matter of  balance, created through thought. When we come across a beautiful object it is felt through the eyes which then opens the heart. Aesthetics is a feeling. For me – it’s love.

Each door, balconied window, carved face peering downwards, ornate chimney surging upwards I was on a ride which I never wanted to end. I feasted on human amazement. The capability of mankind. You could argue that many a craftsman suffered through hard labor but I wonder if that doesn’t discredit the doers. Doing is hard work. But, when we fully accept the doing and step into the creation process, are we not riding a wave which carries it’s own fulfilment?

I wonder if in our automated world we are missing out on the mind to hand relationship where we focus and plow physical energy into the creative process. As that in itself holds the energy of creation. How can there not be moments where we loose ourselves? No longer the worker, we step-up into the role of creator.

Perhaps, that is why I am so ‘enamoured’ with aesthetics. That feeling that I get when I marvel and appreciate which so fills my soul was created by mankind. I am grateful for the time and sweat it took to give the world this feeling – love in the form of matter. It humbles me while at the same-time reminding me I too can create. Whether through words, thoughts or action when I step into that flow of balance and ride the wave of creative energy am I any different than a rose as it opens it petals, or the trill of a bird singing the morning awake?

Are we all not standing ankle deep in the creative river which connects all things?

I think this is where the problem lies. It is when we forget the river, forget our ingenuity. We easily can become too reliant on others to imagine, focus and create. In a fast forward life perhaps to our shame it is easy to loose the appreciation that the material world comes from the realm of the imagination. First made by that someone who gave birth to the thought.

For me, I thirst for aesthetics. It is the God in Man. Creation held in balance and as I stand waist deep in the river of beauty I take that deep dive emerging my whole self into the wonderment of what we are all so capable of doing.

Let us not leave beauty to a bygone age just because it is easier to do things now and there is not the need to be so hands on. Take your hands out of your pockets, grab hold of your imaginings and recapture the effort of the creative doing. As we do we step into the flow and those who know of the flow – know how effortless it all becomes. Effortless because as we ride the feeling of love, beauty is born.