I stumbled across this playlist of epically beautiful instrumental music, and I actually had to stop what I was doing to stare open-mouthed at my computer during one song. It was so beautiful I wanted to turn it off, as if it were too much of a good thing, like my ears and my mind wouldn't be able to stand so much purity and clarity.
Beauty is, I think, sadly lacking in everyday life. Efficiency and practicality are useful and good, but when we laud these virtues at the expense of beauty, I wonder if we aren't losing something precious. Beauty is a sign, an arrow that points to the reality of "now and not yet." This ache I feel around something too beautiful makes me all too aware that this is my life--I am meant for something great, and there is joy and peace in eternity. But at the same time, right now life is streaked with selfishness and abuse and despair. Beauty highlights ugliness. It makes us aware of what life should be and in contrast, what life is.
We need those reminders, whether we find them in music, in stories, in forests, in architecture, in mathematical formulas, in gears aligning, in galaxies, in paintings. We need beauty.
(Also I just read Rollo Mays' The Courage to Create, which has greatly influenced my opinion on the universality of creativity. It's quite short and I highly recommend it for those who care about such things.)
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