beauty

I yearn to truly experience the things I find beautiful. The joy of engaging with beauty and the urge to recreate it becomes an addiction, a hindrance to true appreciation. When my soul resonates with a work of art or a melody that affects me deeply, a great longing overwhelms me to create something similar. I feel as though I cannot grasp that beauty fully without capturing and reshaping its likeness with my own hands.

Every time I hear something that moves me, there is a dichotomy that agitates my soul: joy and discontentment. Joy for the gift of experience; discontentment for a feeling that eludes me. Perhaps it is a selfish desire. I want to be the one who created this beauty and therefore to be known for it. Perhaps it is a craving for a deeper understanding that only emerges through the struggle of creation.

I don't want to be this way, yet every day I see creations that strike me. Designs, animations, songs, buildings, technologies, photographs. And instead of simply marveling, I compare them to myself, my own abilities and ideas. I sort them into boxes: I could replicate that or I could never dream of achieving such brilliance. Ironically, it is my desperate desire to appreciate beauty that keeps me from truly doing so.

How do I escape this exhausting trap? How do I learn to celebrate the creativity of others without looking at it through a mirror of my own abilities?