What Is Beauty?
E Nan
We are born into this world and given just a few months before the conditioning starts. We call it learning. Good boy, well done! No, don't do that! Our non-dualistic view of our surroundings is taken away and with it our innocence. Right, wrong, punishment, reward. We are quick learners. Through the conditioning process aka growing up our true self becomes unrecognizable. It gradually degenerates into our persona / identity. It works for most of us: Be a good student, get a degree, then a career, a car, a house and all the other trimmings.And then there's this tiny percentage of people who are not buying it. They feel something is off which makes them question everything: school, relationships, justice, money, political narratives, god and ultimately their persona as a token in this play.
Crossing paths with those outcasts is one of the most beautiful experiences for me. I feel like swimming through the endless deep sea and suddenly encountering another lost creature. They usually have an incredibly rich life story to share; full of cracks, scratches, dark valleys and high mountains. Full of beauty.
Now would be the moment to build the analogy to a wild tea farm. How unnoticed it grows and thrives, looking all natural and uncultivated which is probably the reason why we don't see them much on social media and eventually in people's tea cups. I should go in depth now, feeding the algorithm, SEO and all that. But I have something more meaningful to share with you.
You can't.
Maybe this is what I have to learn: It's not about how many people can see the beauty in an abandoned gas station. It's about being the one person who stops and appreciates it. It's about being the one person who reaches out and cares.
