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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We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

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