You're pretty and therefore you are excellent.

One of my subjects this semester is Ethics: Practice and Theory. Although I've only just started, I'm already finding it intriguing, especially because this week's lecture delved into something I've been pondering lately, albeit on a very surface level. It's the idea of aesthetic ethics, the ethical judgement which says that whatever is the most beautiful is the most good.

It's a pattern of thinking (or a pattern of feeling, perhaps) that has popped up in several places throughout history but was at its height during the Romantic period. What I'm slowly starting to see is that it's an idea that's still prevalent now, and has a remarkable influence on the culture of this day and age, deeply guiding our estimation of what is valuable and what is not.

I guess this is most obvious in the insatiable celebrity-worship that I imagine may be one of the major factors keeping print media in operation in spite of the paper-eating internet machine. We have learnt to love people and care about their lives for no greater reason than that they are beautiful and wear fabulous clothes.

If anything, I think today's aestheticism might have reached an even greater shallowness than that of the Romantics. The Romantics idolised beauty not just in the physical form, but also in literature and music and art. Today, we let much sub-par creativity slip past the quality radar because it is delivered to us by someone who has glistening white teeth and flawless skin. Is there such a thing as a woman who is famous for her beautiful songwriting and yet looks rather ordinary? I haven't come across one yet -- and I've been looking -- but there is no shortage of incredibly famous women who have beautiful features and yet write very ordinary music. Why have we made physical beauty the chief virtue?

I suppose the challenge is that we are hard-wired to appreciate beauty, even to revel in it. When God made creation, He stepped back to take a look at it, and He enjoyed the glorious beauty of what He had made. It's part of our God-given human experience to catch our breath at things that are magnificently gorgeous. So obviously there is nothing wrong with beauty. It is neither moral or immoral, in and of itself. But that's the point: because it has no inherent moral goodness, it should not be the compass by which we measure worth.

I see this this beauty-worship rear its ugly head when I question why God chose to let me struggle with various flaws rather than provide me with an effortless natural beauty (not to mention grace; just call me SuperAwkward Girl!). Or a bunch of us girls will be sitting around discussing the future and hoping that the men who will sweep us off our feet will be tall, dark, and handsome. There is nothing wrong with feminine beauty, and tall, dark, and handsome men are quite lovely to look at. However, there is no virtue in being either.

The prophet Isaiah, in chapter 53, writes of the still-to-come Jesus that he had nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. Yet the history of humanity has never known a more beautiful person.

Jesus' beauty was of an enduring kind. The most beautiful parts of him were not his form or his features, but his grace, his sacrifice, and his selfless love. It adds up to one beautiful celebrity we can all worship.

* * * * *

Conversations:

Nan -- If only I could mail you some chocolate French toast! xx

This is it.

I sometimes get tired of saying that life is busy. It's usually said as an excuse for not doing something else:

I haven't replied to your letter because life is busy.
I haven't sat down and read a book because life is busy.
I haven't kicked the soccer ball around with my brother because life is busy.
I haven't written in my journal because life is busy.
I haven't composed a blog post because life is busy.

Yeah.

Today I was thinking about that, because just now it's busy with the sort of busyness that makes you lie awake of evenings alternately panicking in case everything doesn't get done in time and then asking yourself if maybe none of it matters that much and you should just sleep in instead and spend all afternoon making ruched fabric flowers. The thing is, life is always going to be busy. If it isn't busyness coming at you externally, it'll be the sort of busyness that you intentionally surround yourself with. Because being busy means you have a job and a life and a network of people that mean something. Things are happening.

And if things are happening, it means you are living life. This is what I am beginning to realise. And if you are living life, you want to make time to do the things that bring life.

Jesus once challenged the Pharisees because they were hung up on following the letter of the law and keeping their tithes managed to the neatest fraction of measurement, yet completely forgot the stuff like loving people and caring about justice. He didn't want to them to ditch the former, but He wanted them to also be engaged in the latter. "These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others," He said in Luke 11:42.

I'm beginning to sense that things won't ever slow down. Something else will always come up. The key, I think, is to stop waiting for this to be done or that to be over, and start existing in the present. That means scheduling in, if necessary, time for people and creativity and sitting on the grass.

This is the realisation I am slowly coming to. I am only at the realisation stage. I have no idea how to actually do this. How do you do what needs doing, while also making time for what you should be doing? I don't know. But I want to learn. I want to learn to live where I am instead of looking ahead all the time, to do these, without neglecting the others.

Beware the double-minded [wo]man

Sometimes the all-or-nothing tendencies that want to run rampant in the creative parts of my life get me confused. One teeny example: yesterday I was fed up with the sheer paltryness (may have just invented a word right there) of my own writing and was ready to vow never to let another word see the light of day -- unless I was sure to the millionth degree that it was the most right, most perfect, most impossible-accurate-to-the-point-where-it-gives-you-shivers word for the job.

Today, I am thinking about signing up for NaBloPoMo, a method guaranteed to provide quantity of words but not necessarily quality.

What is wrong with me? Oh to be sure and stay sure!

----------

conversations:

Staish -- Yippee!! Manly Mousse Date!! *gulp* Oh my! I hope my little memory didn't put scarifying thoughts into your mind :Z.