On trusting beauty. And benevolent clouds

Do people get accustomed to beauty?
Do people get accustomed to ugliness, squalor and dreariness? To pain and disrespect?  
It is proven that we do get used to events, emotions, objects, tastes, people. It’s a defense mechanism that, for instance, allows us to survive when a beloved person dies. We think at first that the pain is unbearable and that we are not going to be able to live without that person, yet after a span of time (sometimes ages, yes), we get used to that hole in our soul and we go on. We know that the abyss is there and is not going to disappear. But we also realize that we still wake up every morning and we are demanded to live on. Paradoxically a consoling - though awkward - truth. The same way, however, we get used to exciting, beautiful and thrilling things, those we thought would guarantee a constant degree of happiness throughout our life, which, on the contrary, after a span of time, (sometimes ages, yes again) become bleak and flat. It seems like we always need “newness” and to overcome this natural (unfavorable?) impulse, a fair amount of endurance and self-control is required. I once read an excellent article about this phenomenon which struck me and surprisingly turned out to make my life easier.

I was thinking about that article again a few days ago, as man I know, who is a pilot, sent me a picture of a sunrise, taken from the cockpit. He is in cargo business, so he mostly flies at night, and lives what I picture to be an interesting, yet somehow strange life. Though it´s a life of status and many privileges, I imagine how it can be lonely too, at traits. Surely dark, let alone for the fact that he wakes up to go to the airport when most of the others are dreaming and rolling under their warm duvets.

Some time ago, in the middle of the night, the flying man sent me an astonishing photo depicting intense blue, fluffy clouds barely disclosing a timid emerging sun. “Gorgeous”, I thought, with a dash of envy, considering that – again – that night I, instead, had “only” slept and as I opened my eyes the marvelous spectacle that the friend witnessed while jetting goods around was already over. 
I considered that my pilot friend sees this every day. Day after day. So I wondered if it´s possible that he still feels, really feels, the poetry of it (or was he only trying to impress me, showing how cool sitting with a whole plane underneath your butt and the whole sky around you is?). Paraphrasing, is it possible to wake up next to your long-term partner, day after day, steal a glance at a body abandoned on a mattress to then think “is this really happening to me? Am I this lucky FOR REAL?!”? Or are we all doomed to just fall into a reassuring, mechanical habit, where the sparklers are mostly the one you lit up on New Year´s Eve while wishing for a different pinch of salt than the one you use to pep up an insipid meal?

I did ask to my captain friend if he still feels the power of the beauty he flies thorough every night, and reassuringly he answered “yes, of course!”. Sometimes, he added, he has the urge to take a picture of a cloud for its particular shape or nuance. And because this is precisely what I wanted to hear and because I am so sneaky, I immediately crafted an extended syllogism for which, yes, waking up next to your beloved after years can still be mesmerizing. 

It probably boils down to the simple truth: it depends on how you want to live. 

If you let beauty touch you.

If that be a question to me, I would vehemently exclaim that, yes, I am totally open for beauty to touch, caress, penetrate, permeate, even scratch me! I am ready to give beauty a pass-partout to my soul and to each and every of my senses. But can you open yourself up to beauty without granting free access to ugliness and evil as well? This (rhetorical) question kept bouncing in my head like in an old-time flipper a couple of nights ago as I was relishing some lovely, special attentions. Quite trivial special attentions, actually. Like gently and silently putting down my phone as I was attempting to find out, around 3 am, when my next train home would be. No words to tenderly ask “…what are you doing?!”. Something maybe ridiculously small and simple, which I noticed, however, left me astonished. It was like putting balm on a sore lip. Like wearing sunglasses on a bright sunny day. Like taking a shower after a long run and then let yourself fall on a soft bed bed with your damp robe still on.

It simply felt right. It made sense. 

Realizing this, I cursed against those moments and people that stole from me the pleasure of naturally trusting this goodness without questioning the authenticity of it. 

This is what we are called to do with beauty: we are naturally inclined to relish it, to let it fill us with its greatness, its inspiration. 

Nobody questions the intentions of a sunrise. 

You don´t doubt the authenticity of blue, fluffy clouds, even if they can turn into dangerous, potentially deadly storms.

I don´t know how much the flying man really felt the sunset he sent me. Or why he shared it with me, but no matter what, I see it as a good sign: I like people who believe in benevolent, magnificent clouds. 

Speechless

Sometimes you are so busy browsing around Europe that you have just a few words left. Yet the impressions are always abundant.