Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder. Though I have ample reasons to suspect that it can also be found in the mind’s eye, the heart’s eye, the shared eye, the third eye.
Which, if I’m not careful, would lead me to conclude that beauty is a subjective thing. Not out there, but in here. An imagined thing.
But imagination, as Picasso says, is also real. Like love is real. Like fun.
So, here’s what I’m imagining:
There’s another kind of reality. It is just as much in here as it is out there. Just as much. Without the in here part, it’s not there. Without the there part, it’s not in here.
It’s where we find things like beauty, love, fun, joy, faith. And games. And art.
I think the place where these things exist, these both here and there things, both imagined and actual, sub- and objective, is the same place Buber was talking about when he wrote I and Thou as in I and Thou.
Rocky (my wife) and I have been married for more than 50 years now. When I look at her, what I see is profoundly beautiful. I see a face that I have faced through the years, a face that looks at me, at me, that knows me, that has seen me through so many ages and stages of life. I see her, then and now, here and there, in Israel where we first met and danced and saw each other. In Pennsylvania and California and Indiana, with the kids, without them. All that time and all those places I see in her beautiful face. Beauty beyond time. Beyond place. Past and present, here and there, and everywhere between.
Nice post. I’m not a physicist, but my understanding is that many of them are coming to the conclusion that this is the way the physical world exists. Subatomic particle behave differently when they are being observed depending on how they are being watched. Further, we simply cannot say what is there when we are not observing it. So physical realities are neither strictly objective nor subjective. They are in that middle space between those categories.
I stumbled upon this today as I am working on my father’s obituary. It is beautiful and full of words that echo in my heart. I miss you and I love that your voice is still here when you are there.
Shael, in one of his last emails to me, your dear dad and my dear friend told me to reprint any of his writings I wanted to share. Every word of his is so alive. I am honored to keep sending them out into what we call “here.”