On beauty...

I'm always amused by the concept of beauty and by the attention it recieves. Of the mania it supposedly purports and passions it arouses. Through the ages, people have devoted their lives in pursuit of something beautiful - possessions largely and of course women. Remember Bathsheba who incited David's lust leading him to kill her husband, Cleopatra who brought the mighty Ceasar to his knees or a Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships... The Kohinoor diamond, Botticelli's Venus, Michealangelo's David.. Da Vinci's Mona Lisa.. I could definitely go on...
Between beautiful women and works of art, I guess you have to hand it to the people whose mania to own and capture immortality via beauty led them to disregard morality and the values and belief system.

As I'm writing this, I looked up the meaning in Wikipedia and quote, "Beauty (also called prettiness, loveliness or comeliness) is a characteristic of a person, animal, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure or satisfaction."

I'm a big fan of Somerset Maugham, an English playwright and novelist who was quite disdainful of this concept and craze around beauty. He said,
"Beauty is an ecstacy; it is as simple as hunger. There is nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all...
But people add other qualities to beauty- sublimity, human interest, tenderness, love - because beauty does not long content them. Beauty is perfect and perfection ( such is human nature) holds our attention but for a while.
Beauty is a blind alley. It is a mountain peak which once reached leads nowhere.
Too much has been written about beauty. That is why I have written a little more. Beauty is that which satisfies the aesthetic instinct. But who wants to be satisfied? It is only to the dullard that enough is as good as a feast. Let us face it: beauty is a bit of a bore."

I can't stop smiling at this. Every time I read it, I'm amused... interested and it gets me thinking... To me, the most beautiful things in life are my two children. It seems there is only one beautiful child in the world and every mother has it. But yes we can rationalise and say that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder and if the beholder has a sophisticated eye - well, Somerset Maugham can take a hike.
There is much beauty to be found in the world though, in the unbridled smile of a child, in the calm of the sea, the finality of a sunset and the promise in a lover's eye...

And in your eyes... God knows what beauty lies...