Whether you believe yourself a creative person, an inspired person, everyone respects beauty. Whether romantic, comedic, satirical, ironic, or excruciatingly painful, we crave beauty. And yes, there is a painful beauty. These kinds of beauty propel a great deal of the world. We seek it, we find it, and we try to preserve it so we may remember it forever.
I became an author to preserve beauty. My characters live in alternate worlds with magical powers and unique abilities. And yet, these are not what catch the reader's eye. For though they live in a fantasy world, their lives mimic ours. They live, they love, and they lose. It is these simple everyday human experiences that are truly beautiful; a conversation that reveals inner emotions, things not seen on the surface. A test of loyalty, friendship, love. This is the true definition of beauty.
We are so distracted in the world today. There is so much at stake. We have high pressured jobs. Pressure coming from every area. We want family, careers, money, knowledge, power. I often think of the world as a room, so large and expansive. The most beautiful room imaginable. The walls are made of carved marble and the stained glass ceiling paints colorful shapes on the ground. And yet, we can't see any of it, because sounding through this room is music so loud and intrusive no other sense could possibly exist. And filling this room is every piece of technology ever invented. It clogs the shaped passageways, the tall emerald columns. It even clogs the light from that beautiful ceiling to ever hit our eyes.
There is a reason that people escape. We go to plays, we see movies, we listen to music for hours on end. We may even pick up a book or two. And it's because we crave to escape for awhile, to enter another place where every focus of our mind and heart can zero in on something beautiful, on tales and notes so tangible we often fool ourselves into reaching out for them.
Simple moments, small things still exist. And it's our duty to keep them. The world has always tried to take them away. To mock what is simple and sacred. Marriage, religion, principles, values, ethics, small acts of kindness, prayer, God, love, commitment, hope, strength, innocence, virtue, and other considered old-fashioned, archaic beliefs and traditions.
The fact that I've written this is proof that we have the power to keep alive our thoughts, our beliefs, so they may never be extinguished without our knowledge, that the world may never cause us to forget what we know... what I know.
A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
