Day 140k: The plain Truth of Beauty … (September 16, 2019)
“And here’s the plain truth, at least as it has been shown to me: We are never far from wonder, and we are ever surrounded by beauty. I remember when I was in my thirties, and I was walking in the woods with a friend and his two-year old son. We were walking along a ridge, and came to a promontory that looked down at the lush forest in the valley below, while a sunlight speckled haze seemed to carpet the forest floor. And I remember trying to get my friend’s oblivious two-year-old to appreciate that glorious moment and take in that majestic landscape. At one point, I gently picked him up and pointed out toward the horizon and said, ‘Look at that, Davis, just look at it!’ And he said, ‘Weaf!’ ‘What?’ I asked, and again he said, ‘Weaf,’ and then reached out and grabbed a single brown oak leaf from the small tree growing next to us. I wanted to explain to him that you can see a brown oak leaf anywhere in the eastern United States in November, that nothing in the forest was actually less interesting than a leaf. But after watching him continue to stare at it, I began to look more deeply at it as well, and I soon realized it wasn’t just a brown leaf at all. Its veins spidered out red and orange and yellow in a pattern far too complex for my brain to fully synthesize, and the more I looked at that leaf with little Davis, the more I was compelled into an aesthetic contemplation I neither understood nor desired, the more I came face-to-face with something commensurate to my full capacity for wonderment. Marveling at the sheer perfection of that single leaf, I was reminded that aesthetic beauty is as much about how and whether you look as what you happen to see. From the quark to the supernova, the wonders around and above and even within us never cease. It is only our attentiveness that is ever in short supply, our ability and willingness to do the work that awe requires … And so it is that I have taken up the idea of absolute non-harmfulness, of exuding gentleness toward the earth and all its inhabitants without limit or measure. Even the normal has become the sacred; even the weeds are my allies.” ~ inspired by John Green & Andy Couturier
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