I feel like I sort of forgot, somewhere along the way, that it’s okay for something to just be beautiful.
Not everything has to be valuable, or practical, or pragmatic, or even helpful.
Some things can just be beautiful. And that can be lovely.
John Green gets at this idea really nicely in this video:
He uses the example of sports to illustrate his point.
When people go to a baseball game, the whole joy of it is that –in the larger scheme of things– it doesn’t matter. It’s a bunch of people gathered to enjoy watching something beautiful and exciting happen where there are absolutely no real stakes.
That type of thing feels so foreign during the pandemic.
Like John says, it feels like a luxury now, to be able to care about things that don’t matter.
There are still beautiful non-important treasures that we can access from inside our homes. And despite the circumstances, we can give ourselves permission to enjoy these little things that don’t really matter. We can enjoy these things for the sheer beauty of it.
For some people it’s Animal Crossings. For me, right now, it’s season four of my favourite Viking TV show, The Last Kingdom. It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t matter. That point.
Despite the large scale suffering taking place in the world, we still need beauty.
As John says near the end of the video, “we all need things in our lives that have no end, save beauty.”