David McElroy

The experience of beauty can be so intense for me that it hurts my heart — but it’s a joyful hurt that is full of the pleasure of experiencing something which is completely true and real.

I first encountered this idea when I was too young to understand it. A Star Trek episode quoted a line from English poet George Herbert which asked, “Is there in truth no beauty?”

I spent a lot of time pondering that line, because it felt important in an irrational way. As I read the various English romantic poets in college, I started seeing a glimmer of understanding, but I still wasn’t there.

I read about how the Greeks equated beauty and truth. I read the English poet John Keats’ line, “Beauty is truth and truth is beauty.”

And then when I experienced a deeper form of mature love, it all suddenly made sense. I still couldn’t explain the reasoning, but I could suddenly feel it. When I experience transcendent beauty — of the kind I experienced when I photographed this sunset Monday night — I experience something about truth.

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You want success, wealth and acclaim. I want freedom, acceptance and self-expression. Everybody’s list might sound a little different. But what if we’re all really looking for unconditional love — and we’re all pursuing it in the ways we were programmed to believe would get it?

Our fantasy idea of home is the thing we’re all looking for, because that is where we’ll be loved unconditionally. It’s where people will understand us and accept us. It’s the place where we will be able to open up to others — and experience something like a mirror of our own soul.

We’re looking for a partner who accepts and mirrors us — our thoughts, our values, our hopes, our dreams.

We’re looking for people who somehow feel like home — who feel familiar and who give us a sense of belonging.

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It’s been almost 30 years since I figured out — much to my surprise — that what I really wanted more than anything else vocationally was to be an artist. And I’ve spent most of the years since then explaining to myself over and over why this isn’t possible.

After enough reasonable explanation, I start getting numb to what I want. I forget what it feels like. I turn my attention elsewhere and tell myself that realistic people do other things. Maybe I can make filmmaking a hobby if I do really well for awhile at something I hate.

Doesn’t that make sense? I can make a few hundred thousand dollars a year as a real estate broker. How about that? Isn’t that more realistic? Sure. Why not. I’ll do that. It all makes so much sense. And it sounds so responsible.

And so I start burying what I know — every now and then, at least — that I want. Until somebody comes along and pokes a stick at something I try hard not to look at.

That’s what happened today.

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