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Ideas on Beauty

It has been aptly said that a thing of beauty is a joy forever. It has to be seen, however, to which kind of beauty this saying applies.

It is observed that a person, having facial beauty, is not necessarily beautiful at heart. For example, a lady who has attractive looks, no longer looks beautiful if she acts like an enraged bull in china shop. So, it has been truly said that handsome is he that handsome does.

Again, beauty is subjective. For instance, anyone who is a lover of nature, cannot resist being drawn to a beautiful flower, but to a bird a flower is only a thing to be nibbled at. So, beauty does not necessarily lie in the colour or contours, rather it lies in the eye of the beholder.

Further, in this attitude towards beauty, man seems to be oblivious of what lies under the skin of the person he loves. For, if he had remembered that, underneath of skin, is the net of nerves, mucus, bones etc., his idea of beauty is only meaningless. Hence the saying goes that beauty is only skin-deep.

Again, time also leaves its own indelible marks in the form of wrinkles on the face. It points to one's vanity due to one's beauty of form, because there is no element of permanence in the form of the face. Disfigurement by accident also reveals that mere linear beauty of things is not a joy forever.

Furthermore, man's body and its beauty are nourished and brought into existence by what a man eats. Hunger robs a man's face of what was until then called beauty. Similarly, disease, fatigue and worry also eat away what is called loveliness.

Moreover, in fact, the colours and form look as they do because of the presence of light, and a colour is nothing but the various rays with different wave-lengths, and undeniable is the fact that light itself is beauty.

All these facts bespeak the truth that beauty, which has rightly been termed 'a source of joy forever', should be something more lasting and divine. When we discover this kind of beauty in God, who is Light personified, who knows no disease, no accident, no sorrow, no ageing, no injury, no wear and tear, no fatigue, no weakness and is in fact, one who blesses divine beauty, beauty of the mind, the spirit, the form and the actions. That beauty is exquisite, pure, natural, innocent and ennobling.

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