A Glimpse of Beauty
Consider a popular phrase: “He (or she) really has his (or her) life together.” This is said in a spirit of admiration. Why? What is so admirable about a person having his or her life together? Further, what exactly does it mean to have one’s life together?
Before analyzing that question, let us, first, consider the reason for our saying it so often. Perhaps here an intuition will be useful: we human beings seem to first be enraptured by the beauty of something, rather than its intrinsic truth or goodness. We seek to do the good, yes, and we also seek the truth, yes, but we, first, seek the beautiful.
What does this mean in concrete human actions? It means that what first motivates us is the vision of something which possesses clarity, integrity, and proportionality – in other words, that which is beautiful. The following are examples of such visions:
“I am standing on top of a mountain, after a grueling two-day climb, 20,000 feet, with clouds under my feet. I have achieved something.”
“I am married to a woman who deeply loves me, who loves me uniquely in the special way of marital love. We have children for whom we work together to care for, to nourish, to cherish, and to teach how to live life in all of its reality.”
“I wake up daily to go perform work which I am deeply passionate about. I lose myself in my work. It brings me great joy to complete my tasks, and it also brings positive change to society. God’s grace permeates my work: even in the most trying of circumstances, I can feel a palpable sense, sometimes so deeply integrated that it can be missed, of peace – a peace which brings forth, from the deepest depths of my being, a resolve to perform my work well.”
Let me, here, be vulnerable: these are my own visions of beauty – and they are, most likely, the strongest visions I have ever had.
A Will to Do Good
It is now after this glimpse of beauty – this glimpse of, in some apophatic sense, eternity – that our wills feel drawn to reforming our lives in order to pursue that vision.
“I need to build a life of discipline and training so that I can successfully scale that mountain.”
“I need to build, in myself, the virtues of chastity, purity, masculinity, strength, romance, spontaneity, discipline, self-sacrifice, and industriousness (that is, I must be a fully actualized man), in order that I find a woman worthy of my hand in marriage, and a woman who herself desires such a man as that who I wish to be. If I want a woman who herself seeks to build, in her character, chastity, purity, femininity, strength, romance, spontaneity, discipline, self-sacrifice, and industriousness (that is, a fully actualized woman), then I must myself seek to build those virtues. Therefore, I must improve. The stakes are too great if I fail to do so. The culture of complacency, of mediocrity, and, ultimately, of death, are too powerful and they will only be beaten back by authentic virtue.”
“If I want to daily perform work through which I find deep, authentic meaning, then I have to build discipline and hold myself accountable to a high standard of excellence. This accountability must also be consistent, for excellence is not an act, but a habit.”
The key is that the pursuit of the beautiful ultimately will, if we really have found the beautiful and if we really have surrendered ourselves to its calling and beckoning, reform us. Consider that word – “reform”. We shed our current form (our current dispositions, habits, likes, and dislikes) and, in its place, build a renewed form (with new dispositions, habits, likes, and dislikes). Now, for the hard truth – the truth we all know and despise, yet also the truth which ultimately gives us hope in making moral progress: this reformation is painful and difficult.
A Digression on Music, Beauty, and the Good
Let me, for a second, focus on a rather bizarre cultural phenomenon of modern times: the rise of ugly, disgusting, boring, banal, and degrading-to-the-dignity-of-the-human-person music. One of the most ironic sights of modern times is seeing those who claim to be for the advancement of woman’s rights listen (with pleasure) to completely pointless music which explicitly degrades women. There is, of course, no better example than (most of) rap; but the likes of Katy Perry, Ariana Grande, and Nicki Minaj are no better.
Now, let’s say that I’m a man, and I wish to find a woman of the virtues listed above (that is, a fully actual woman, or, perhaps more aptly put, a woman who is conscious of her potential and actively striving and struggling to fulfill it). It is rather obvious that listening to music which consistently degrades the dignity of men, women, and relationships between them – that is, by trivializing sex, by glorifying banal and boring binge drinking, and by turning each other into narcissists – well, it is rather obvious that listening to such music is not going to help build the virtue necessary to find a woman of that caliber. Now, the man here has a clear choice: either elevate one’s musical taste, to that of real excellence and beauty, to that which stirs the soul to climb great heights, or continue with the mediocrity of the moderns. He could become pusillanimous in making this decision, with various excuses, the most base of which is, “Does it really matter what music I listen to?”. To such a man, nothing can really be said: there is a reason Plato and Aristotle devoted significant majorities of their writings on education to the cultivation of good musical ability and taste in the young.
Music is a uniquely human activity – a gift from God to men, to express the inexpressible in song. Just as with sex, if we get music wrong, we get life wrong. What we feel uncomfortable speaking about in prose, we feel liberated to sing about in song. Thus, if we turn our (good and natural) desire for music into something which glorifies that which brings us away from the beautiful life, then we have become connoisseurs of ugliness – and, ultimately, our lives will reflect what we consume. Our lives will be ugly, but since we were made to live beautiful lives, we will be deeply dissatified with them.
