Why can beauty hurt so much? Why do I see her face in the sky?

By David McElroy · October 23, 2017

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.

That beauty and truth transport my heart to images of her face — and I am suddenly far away from this physical world, in a place that feels spiritual. Ethereal. Mystical. Full of truth and beauty and love.

My brain screams that it all sounds like nonsense, but my heart undestands and is bathed in a light of pure truth when this happens. It’s like a religious experience — being taken to a mountaintop to see the face of God.

When I experienced this beauty tonight, I saw her face in it. I felt her heart. I felt her love. And even though it was all in a spiritual realm, it was as real as the bright palette of colors in front of my eyes.

It was beauty.

It was truth.

It was love.

It was her face.

It was everything rolled into one and held up high as something that can be experienced but not explained.

I wish I could tell her this, but I can’t. I’d like to send this to her and say, “This is your face to me,” but I can’t. I wish I could step out of this world and step into an ethereal world where I experience her. My heart longs to share this experience of truth and beauty with someone who has no way to know I see her face in the sunset.

I suppose she will never know. That brings sadness to the joy. It mixes hurt with the beauty.

I don’t know where she is tonight — and I don’t know that I couldn’t successfully explain this if I tried to talk with her about it — but I saw her face tonight.

The romantic writers knew that truth and beauty were somehow connected. I can’t explain it, but I know it’s true. The same God who made her face — and taught me to understand and to love every line and angle of it — showed me the same beauty in the sky in front of me tonight.

My heart can experience what my brain can’t explain. And that’s OK. It hurts to experience that much beauty — and to be filled with love at the sight — but it’s the only way I have to experience her.

My life would be easier if I didn’t feel that way, but I have to trust that the God who created the sky and her face and my heart — and taught me the connection between them — has His reasons for painting this picture of truth and beauty which I can scarcely comprehend.

Note: If you’ll click the photo, you can see it at three times the size of my normal photos on here. It’s best experienced at a bigger size.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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