"Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in."
American Beauty
That's one of my favourite quote from one of my favourite movies ever.
Indeed, there is so much beauty around us. And people enjoy beauty. We want to look nice, we spend a lot of money and time on that. We would like to have good-looking partner, nice car, we enjoy watching beautiful people playing in movies etc.
It's strange, but despite all of that I very often feel that in most of the cases people just don't see and don't appreciate beauty around them. Do we often pay attention to the green colours of the trees around us, to the beauty of some shadow, to the beauty of sounds around us? It sound awkward, but isn't food on our plates sometimes just too beautiful to be eaten?
Take Eurovision Song Contest for example. Vast majority of my friends thinks that Eurovision is 1) commercial event which has nothing to do with culture; 2) contest of low-quality pop songs; 3) contest where politics and not real performance is involved.
I actually pretty much agree with them. And still I consider myself fan of Eurovision. Why? Isn't it great to see many beautiful people from whole Europe coming together not to discuss new policies of energy market, coming together not to compete in making proposals for new laws, but for singing. And there is always 3-4 songs out of all of them which I really like. Which are beautiful.
What I want to say, is that there is actually beauty everywhere, not just in places, where it is supposed to be. But how to see it everywhere, without taking drugs, for example?
I think, seeing beauty can be trained. That's what I do, actually. In the moments I feel bad, unrest or even stressed, I stop for a moment and make myself think - "OK, it is hard, but what is beautiful about it - about people I am dealing with, about this day/night, about life as such.
It is actually one of my several business ideas. To make trainings for people who want to be more successful, happier in their lives. It has become new direction in trainings in USA recently - "Positive psychology".
3 comments:
My thoughts exactly! One of my exes once asked me: "Don`t you feel SAD that you`re gonna have to spend so much of your free time walking outside with your piglet? I mean - think how many hours, days and MONTHS it makes when you count it all together!". I simply looked at him and smiled. For me walking outside is quality time. Yes, of course, it might not always be very productive but looking at trees (as much as I can see - I`m pretty short-visioned, you see =) and other plants and my animal and people is an interesting activity. Furthermore - it is a calming activity. I very much prefer walking outside to wrestling in a gym or doing any other kind of sports/leisure time activities there are. At least a little bit of nature keeps the city people from going crazy under all that pressure, unfortunately most city people do not understand that...
And about Eurovision song contest... I have grown to think that those individuals who are so panicly against Eurovision or the whole idea of it, actually hold their own smaller problems, e.g. they might be a bit of nationalists or afraid that "that bad music" might bite them when they let it too close. I know what is good music and am of the opinion that in order to find those 3-4 good songs and 1-2 relly good songs for myself every year I am more than ready to watch Eurovision, be it a bit silly or whatever. We should keep in mind that while listening to the radio, the situation is practically the same - there are a lot of crappy songs out there, the majority of what we hear is perfectly average and then there are a few songs that will follow us forever and which we love and treasure. And well, you know, sometimes they just might jump up in a contest called Eurovision...!
Do you think Lordi is beautiful? :) At least they finally made a statement that it is possible for one nation to unite around certain kind of music and attitude it witholds. It was so beautiful to see grannies and children together waving their pinky and forefinger in the air to salute the music of our time, heavy metal!
PS. Greetings from beautiful Sri Lanka!
Hey Tomi!
Have not heard about you for so long! :)
Yeah, that's another great thing about that kind of events - they can really unite small nations like Estonians or Finns.
Hope to meet you very soon!
Deniss
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