Each experience of beauty and love stands alone, different from the rest

By David McElroy · August 18, 2018

When my friend reacted to this sunset photo Friday afternoon, I was so dumbfounded that I didn’t know what to say.

“I always wondered why people take pictures of sunsets, but I guess they’re all different, aren’t they?” he said. “I thought if you’d seen one, you’d pretty much seen them all.”

He might as well have been speaking to me in a language I’d never heard, because nothing about what he was saying made sense. He thought every sunset was alike? But, somehow, looking at this photo I shot Thursday night, he finally noticed that the clouds and sky and color and texture makes everything different? How could someone become an adult and not already realize this?

And then I suddenly realized I was imposing my assumptions on him. I forget that some people don’t see as much, don’t feel as much — don’t experience as much. And it made me long to show those like my friend what they’re missing.

Beauty is infinitely diverse. Every sunset is its own universe. Every tree is a microcosm of all creation and all of life. Isn’t that obvious? How can you see a sunset or a flower or a baby’s face without feeling that you’re having an experience you will never repeat?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that some people are experiencing the world with a much smaller set of tools to evaluate its beauty and majesty. Some people see a home and just experience a pragmatic structure for staying safe from the elements, but some of us experience something of breathtaking organic beauty — something that feeds the soul as well as protecting the body.

Maybe this is why some people buy the most generic, pragmatic “four walls and a roof” which might happen to impress the neighbors, while some of us dream of finding our own Fallingwater experience for life?

Some people paint the world with a small set of emotions, a small set of colors, a small set of ideas about beauty and love. To these people, the world is fairly simple.

Once you’ve seen a pretty sunset, you’ve seen them all.

Once you’ve seen a beach, you’ve seen them all.

Once you’ve seen beautiful design, you might even wonder what the point is.

But that’s not the world I experience. It’s not the world I want to experience.

Every single day is fresh and new in some way. Every leaf and tree branch is unique and beautiful in its own way. Every sunset contains infinite possibilities. Every heart is capable of infinite love if you can just find the key.

Look at the leaves below from my back yard last weekend. They’re perfect. Everything is as Nature intended, from the texture of the body to the intricate network of tiny veins inside which carry moisture and nourishment throughout the entire system. The green is a sensory delight and the overall design is one of nature.

How can anyone and look at this — really look at it — without being astonished to live in a world of such beauty?

There is a lot of ugliness and pain in this world, but it’s primarily one of stunning beauty. I’m in love with the beauty and love and diversity of what Nature created for us to enjoy. I need to experience every day to the fullest. I need to experience every love to the fullest.

No matter how mundane someone else might see a sunset or a flower or a blade of grass, I see the entire universe. I see love. I see the infinite Spirit who created all of it, including us.

I want to drink it all in — and experience all this world has to offer for as long as I can. Otherwise, aren’t you just living the same day or same year over and over again? What’s the point in that?

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It turns out that the radical far left has been training “Antifa cats” to sabotage anything important to Donald Trump. Everything he did was perfect. Honest. It was all the cats’ fault. Arrest all the cats! This is the latest of my ridiculous satirical shorts. Please go watch it. Then “like” it and subscribe. Please. I’m begging you. (Too much?) Although a couple of the previous videos have had views in the hundreds, most have still been seen by fewer than 20 people. So I seem to be having trouble letting people know that page exists.

Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

The Republican Party is dead. It still exists in name, of course, but it’s nothing but a shell. All that’s left are idiots and stooges and con men of the MAGA party. When Donald Trump is gone — which won’t be long — those populist idiots and pragmatic fools will have no one to follow. Democrats will thrive. They will take more power than ever and they will push the federal government further to the radical far left than ever. When that happens, don’t just blame Trump if you’re a conservative. Blame every person who has claimed to be a conservative and has given up on principles, character and everything else that Republicans once claimed to stand for. As someone who worked as a GOP political consultant for many years, this is disgusting and disturbing to me. Those who have enabled Trump to have almost unchecked power are going to be shocked when they see what they will unleash in the long run. It’s been plain all along what this narcissistic con man is. It’s your fault that you chose to pretend not to see what he really is.

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.

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