I wrote this essay for reflections contest and won second. The topic was Define Beauty.
“Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in the mirror” - Kahlil Gabran. Beauty is anything which provokes inspirational thought. It cannot be destroyed, nor contained. The thoughts which remain in the individual from the work itself are the true beauty of life. Once beauty is found, it cannot be held. It flows though you, and brings a renewed gratification for the details which are so overlooked in the world. It will fill you, and its fire of inspiration will always have its embers rustled when you bring it to mind. Beauty is forever. It is the quiet force which is concealed till the mind opens its doors. I believe beauty comes in two forms, that which is personal, and that which is universal.
Personal beauty is any work of art which was not designed. It has been found in my own life in the markings of two generations of family in my grandmothers house. The marks each child made on the wall from each year they grew, the wear of the tile floor in the kitchen, and the smell of the rosemary plants on the patio. Although many could view it as run down, or even shabby, I recollect on these things as a great reminder to the memories they bring. Simply revolving an aged letter opener, dulled by decades of use and its golden tent made murky by the rub of hands, could bring to mind what he letters said, or the reactions from a few special cards. The imperfections around the home, such as the split tile from dropping a chair someone carried could bring to mind all the dinners around the table the chair experienced. One could ask, How could cracks on a floor possibly show beauty? Surely beauty can be found in art which is made by skilled renaissance men, or in the shine of modern skyscrapers, but it is not found in imperfections. Beauty however, is not found only in great works. The nostalgic feelings which are reminisce on when visiting an old town, or holding an object from the past, are as beautiful as the colors in the sky. It turns over aged memories, encompassed with dust, and shakes the rust off of what was formerly forgotten. The autumn leaves were not designed by any great artist, yet they bring joy when walking on a windy day, if in the right mindset. If in the wrong mindset they are an inconvenience and grab at your boots, and tug your jacket, you can never appreciate the simple beauty of nature’s dance. Personal beauty invokes what universal beauty mimics, the epiphany of contentment, and the urge to understand more deeply its complexities. The sea waves breaking upon worn sand, the tiny stitches in a human fingerprint, and the puddle upon which the world reflects are all pieces of personal beauty, which when put
together, form the world we live in, if only one can see the puzzle in front of us.
Beauty can also be universal, or anything made by humans to invoke inspirational reaction. The artwork of Michelangelo, who painted the Sistine Chapel, still speaks its volumes to us today. The artwork reaches out to you, and its purpose is for you to feel like you are in the heaven which it displays. This is, the more commonly recognized art. You can sort it, organize it, and put it away in boxes and folders, but the work itself is not the beauty which most hold ideal, it is the reaction, the awe-inspiring, which is the true beauty of these works. Even the notes in Debussy’s Clair de Lune, although not beautiful themselves, but once strung together and timed, are as inspirational as the works in paint,pastels, and photographs. The silent lyrics in the classical music speak more of emotion than of words, and nothing gets lost in translation. Many find Ansel Adam’s photographs to be the beauty in the natural world which they seek, and they are correct that it is beauty. But Ansel Adams saw the photographs the way they were, before they were even shot, he only wanted to help others view it the way he did, and used filters and color distortions to portray them in the light which he viewed himself. In this way, universal art helps convey, to those who need a helping hand, the artistic and beautiful nature of the natural world.
In conclusion, I urge you to evaluate beauty in your own life, and to pick up the pieces of the puzzle which so many miss in the rush of everyday.
- Nathan Boone
Insight into funny everyday occurrences
Friday, May 28, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
On Academic Dishonesty:
Cheating is to blame for the increase and movement in new technology which we rely on today. It's true! It just so happens it's called a different name "Research" and "inspiration." Think about it, even Bill Gates got his idea from another guy, recoded it and patented it. Some successful cheaters win grammies for using beats from other songs. Get caught checking answers on a test and you get sent to the office. Where's the love? Alright, I understand their point, studying the material helps teachers keep their jobs which keeps jobs in the field of education stable...That is the point, right? I find it hard to believe I will ever need to know complex math equations. So, they say, its to expand your horizons. Alright, so why does group work ( which is exactly what you use in the work force) get so frowned upon? It's all politics. Hell, they even cheat in politicis.. Great cheaters get promoted to the Central Intelligence Agency. Don't feed me that bull principal. I admite you can't actually let kids cheat whenever they want, there has to be a balance, much like the war on drugs. I'll explain, sell drugs, go to jail, have a hard time getting a job. Cheat all the time, get caught, have a hard time getting into college. But an occasional cheater, usually won't get caught, and it will probably increase his/her charisma to swoon their peers to let them. People might tell you its wrong, but i tell you, In Alabama, it is illegal to wear a fake mustache that causes laughter in church, so, what the hell is with that?
- Nathan Boone
- Nathan Boone
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Perhaps an Introduction to who i am?
For anyone who stumbles upon this blog, Greetings! This blog is just one of the early steps toward being a writer, and also an independent thinker ( if there is such a thing ). Im 18, a graduating senior of the 2010 class, and a future student at Saint Edward's University in Austin. Go hilltoppers! I write on Christian topics, rants on small annoyances ( such as some naked man always by my locker at the gym) and other random things. I can't put an exact genre on what I write, but then again, who really can.
Letting Go of Hatred ( Through Christian Eyes)
Again, one of my earlier works. Just randomly wrote it up late at night.
On the letting go of your hatred.
One of the greatest things bringing down people these days is their hatred for things. This I find to be more fact than opinion. Think about it, who doesn’t shake their fists and scowl if a person cuts you off, or you hear someone scoff at you from far away? Everyday, some form of hatred goes around in everyone. It is inevitable, your rush to anger at the breaking of the “moral code which everyone knows to obey, and constantly breaks”. Well i will speak on this in three ways.
First, to find compassion in others, which would solve the problem of your anger at their always messing up, you must find it within yourself. Think of it this way, understand that you are only playing into the system of hate whenever you shake your fists back at the dishonest or person who messed up. This system goes something like this. You are driving along, some jerk in a jeep cuts you off and slams on to breaks to pull off very abruptly into a store right in front of you. You honk, roll your window down to shout something you know they really wont hear anyway, and sigh exasperatedly and continue your drive. When you reach your destination, a lady with 2 bags in her hand exits her car as your walking in. In a great mood you would hold the door open, but your in a rush from that jerk cutting you off, and she is pretty far away. So you walk in, and continue your day oblivious to that woman knowing you could have held the door open for her, and taking the rest of the coffee at work without making more because maybe you could be the next and you would get what is coming. Well hey! you already got cut off, thats enough for what is coming. Satan really rejoices in this system. It plays perfectly into society, especially one with people getting closer and closer together in cities, constantly bugging each other off. But what if instead, that same jerk cuts you off, slams on the breaks, pulls into the building, and you say wow, I’m glad nothing happened and he got where he needed to go without missing it. Given, I’m not saying its not hard. Its, very, very hard. The hardest part is simply remembering to find compassion! How easy is it to forget a mindset your faking. but as C.S Lewis puts it “All morals tend to turn into the things they are pretending to be." You might try to fake compassion for a while, and see after a week or two that it comes easier, even after shaking your fists all your life at that very annoying person in the red jeep.
Secondly, I offer you help on how to achieve this compassion. Instead of only seeing it from your view, lets replay the same story. Don is a single father, with a child whom he just put in day care. He used to teach guitar lessons, and drive on the beach and live the life he wanted to, before his engaged fiance had their child, and left to pursue another man, leaving the child, a girl, with him. He just put the girl into daycare, and finds out he is late for his second day of his job at the office which he hates, but he took because guitar lessons don’t pay enough. He gets in his red jeep, and still doesn’t know the road by heart, he sees his office coming up closely, and the only opening is right behind him, he cuts in, fuzzy dice swerving from the rear view mirror, and pulls into the office. You shake your fists angrily, and don’t open the door for the woman with the two bags, which were containing the donuts for the meeting your both dreading. We can never know the stories of others.
And thirdly, I present to you another way of looking at it. This time, your leaving from work, tired and very angry about getting even more work from a meeting where all the donuts were gone and the coffee was all gone and you had to make more. So your driving, and this guy in a honda accord is just taking his sweet time, your getting angry cause you there’s a light you would of gone through had he, and you let out a honk when its green and he doesn’t go right away, and he turns into the same apartment complex as you, and when he gets out, you realize that that guy is one of your best friends and he wanted to make sure that he stayed right ahead of you. and all that anger, turns to happiness, because you just realized your best friend is in town, and he spotted you driving. And if we could just apply this to everyone, and give the benefit of the doubt, that we are all “in this together” then how could we hold onto this hatred? We would become very happy indeed, and satan would be quite upset this system he made where you would never realize you were keeping yourself from being happy, is suddenly broken. And now this commandment of “love your neighbor like yourself” doesn’t seem like a rule at all, but something to make sure you stay very happy indeed. God does seem to have a very funny way of making your rules very beneficial to your enjoying your life. Recognize this, and you’ll stop beating the crap outta yourself to make sure you don’t have a good time.
On the letting go of your hatred.
One of the greatest things bringing down people these days is their hatred for things. This I find to be more fact than opinion. Think about it, who doesn’t shake their fists and scowl if a person cuts you off, or you hear someone scoff at you from far away? Everyday, some form of hatred goes around in everyone. It is inevitable, your rush to anger at the breaking of the “moral code which everyone knows to obey, and constantly breaks”. Well i will speak on this in three ways.
First, to find compassion in others, which would solve the problem of your anger at their always messing up, you must find it within yourself. Think of it this way, understand that you are only playing into the system of hate whenever you shake your fists back at the dishonest or person who messed up. This system goes something like this. You are driving along, some jerk in a jeep cuts you off and slams on to breaks to pull off very abruptly into a store right in front of you. You honk, roll your window down to shout something you know they really wont hear anyway, and sigh exasperatedly and continue your drive. When you reach your destination, a lady with 2 bags in her hand exits her car as your walking in. In a great mood you would hold the door open, but your in a rush from that jerk cutting you off, and she is pretty far away. So you walk in, and continue your day oblivious to that woman knowing you could have held the door open for her, and taking the rest of the coffee at work without making more because maybe you could be the next and you would get what is coming. Well hey! you already got cut off, thats enough for what is coming. Satan really rejoices in this system. It plays perfectly into society, especially one with people getting closer and closer together in cities, constantly bugging each other off. But what if instead, that same jerk cuts you off, slams on the breaks, pulls into the building, and you say wow, I’m glad nothing happened and he got where he needed to go without missing it. Given, I’m not saying its not hard. Its, very, very hard. The hardest part is simply remembering to find compassion! How easy is it to forget a mindset your faking. but as C.S Lewis puts it “All morals tend to turn into the things they are pretending to be." You might try to fake compassion for a while, and see after a week or two that it comes easier, even after shaking your fists all your life at that very annoying person in the red jeep.
Secondly, I offer you help on how to achieve this compassion. Instead of only seeing it from your view, lets replay the same story. Don is a single father, with a child whom he just put in day care. He used to teach guitar lessons, and drive on the beach and live the life he wanted to, before his engaged fiance had their child, and left to pursue another man, leaving the child, a girl, with him. He just put the girl into daycare, and finds out he is late for his second day of his job at the office which he hates, but he took because guitar lessons don’t pay enough. He gets in his red jeep, and still doesn’t know the road by heart, he sees his office coming up closely, and the only opening is right behind him, he cuts in, fuzzy dice swerving from the rear view mirror, and pulls into the office. You shake your fists angrily, and don’t open the door for the woman with the two bags, which were containing the donuts for the meeting your both dreading. We can never know the stories of others.
And thirdly, I present to you another way of looking at it. This time, your leaving from work, tired and very angry about getting even more work from a meeting where all the donuts were gone and the coffee was all gone and you had to make more. So your driving, and this guy in a honda accord is just taking his sweet time, your getting angry cause you there’s a light you would of gone through had he, and you let out a honk when its green and he doesn’t go right away, and he turns into the same apartment complex as you, and when he gets out, you realize that that guy is one of your best friends and he wanted to make sure that he stayed right ahead of you. and all that anger, turns to happiness, because you just realized your best friend is in town, and he spotted you driving. And if we could just apply this to everyone, and give the benefit of the doubt, that we are all “in this together” then how could we hold onto this hatred? We would become very happy indeed, and satan would be quite upset this system he made where you would never realize you were keeping yourself from being happy, is suddenly broken. And now this commandment of “love your neighbor like yourself” doesn’t seem like a rule at all, but something to make sure you stay very happy indeed. God does seem to have a very funny way of making your rules very beneficial to your enjoying your life. Recognize this, and you’ll stop beating the crap outta yourself to make sure you don’t have a good time.
The Pain of Breaking Up ( Through Christian Eyes)
I wrote this a couple months back when my ex-girlfriend and I split, oh well. Thought for the first few posts I'd catch you all up on some earlier works, keep the faith.
On the pain of breaking up:
It appears to me, that in the stage between adolescence and maturity, one of the hardest obstacles spiritually is the remain strong, and grow, from the pain of breakups, heartbreak, and a loss of a best friend and, as it appears to be at that time, a significant other. I believe this to be because, like so many others have stated, it appears that they bring the best out of you, and after such a loss, where you are in both mental and physical pain, from tears and the literal feeling of a hole in your chest, you are in no place to handle the loss of the best side of you being taken from you, with the people whom you stopped talking to for the person that just left. Who can blame you? The cliche phrase of its just high school, can so often mean more. Your first kiss, inspiration, biggest reason to smile, and close ally can hardly be wrapped up by people saying “there is more fish in the sea”, for the tired fisherman/woman has no time to chase what they appear to be mere catfish to the merlin of what they loss. But the silver lining in the bombs going off in your mind, is that your building stronger as a person. So typical the old break up phase. Tears, hatred, jealousy, the beginnings of running after being hit on the ground by working out and pursuing old hobbies and friends, the eventual casting off of the depression which you hardly want to keep holding onto but don’t know how to let go, and then the merging happy with your old friends regained, and hobbies bring you joy again. But upon deeper reflection, what really are you happy about? The forgetting of a past love? That your strength is regained and ready to “cast the line and go fishing”? It doesn't appear to be so, since rebounds always end in heart break, or at least crashing after your intentions were not out of finding love but forgetting it. No, it comes from you finding out exactly why you were happy before, because you were happy for yourself, and that you always could be, and you just forgot how to be. But what if this break up process kept going on, and after you kept the hobbies and friends, you kept working at them still instead of starting the cycle again? You’d find that all along the mirage that it was “you two against the world” was false. In truth, a relationship can and often does bring out the best in a person, but this is because of the love you find in them, the compassion, and joy you did not have before. But the real joke of it is, that love, compassion and joy, is only a very lacking supplement of another greater, more powerful and never ending love, compassion and joy, which would crush the cycle of love, loss, and life again. Once you realize this, you can begin to understand what exactly the phrase “A woman's heart should be so hidden in Christ that a man should have to seek Him first to find her.” means. ( the poem’s title is "When I say, 'I am a Christian'" by Carol Wimmer) This is NOT a rule God has placed so that his glory remains in his believers, for his glory could be no more diminished by this than a man could make a dark room light by yelling obsence things at the darkness demanding it go away. This is rather, a guide God has set up for both parties of a relationship. After the first and greatest love is found, the cycle broken, and the person wrapped up in their purpose of finding fulfillment, it is then that they are ready to find someone whom they can find the secondary love and compassion with, but do not mistake this for permanent love and compassion, it is, and always will be, a secondary love, never possible to match, overpower, or even come close to that of the first of the Almighty. They are ready because, they can land on their two feet, with the love of God between them, not simply the regular “high school relationship” , and once it ends, if the love of God has remained within them, they can find peace and strength in him, knowing that truly the piece that completed them was God, not each other. For all those suffering in the pain of a broken relationship, my heart goes out to you. I know of the feelings of pain, and the sick irony of only forgetting the person, to remember you forgot, and to remember again. But there is much hope, and there is much to learn from this. We can never know God’s plan, it has been made long before the earth was even created, and only in retrospect can we truly say “ah, i see now what you were doing. thank you for not granting my silly prayers which would lead away from that path” Much like God made the Pharaoh hard headed, not willing to accept Moses demand to let his people free, we can never know what emotions and qualities God instills in people and for what reason, and we must not pretend too. Only, focus on the rebuilding process of yourself, and you might be surprised by Joy in looking for Christ during this process. Khalil Gibran puts it this way “Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self, so therefore, trust the physician and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility.” Trust in the physician, for your understanding is your growth in knowledge, like breaking down your muscles when working out, only so they can grow stronger. Do not seek revenge, or keep hatred within your heart, for no one but the devil, not even you holding them in, will be happy in doing so. Keep up the good fight my friends, heartbreak is just a hard stone on the difficult path we walk on barefoot to go through the narrow gates of God.
- Nathan Boone
On the pain of breaking up:
It appears to me, that in the stage between adolescence and maturity, one of the hardest obstacles spiritually is the remain strong, and grow, from the pain of breakups, heartbreak, and a loss of a best friend and, as it appears to be at that time, a significant other. I believe this to be because, like so many others have stated, it appears that they bring the best out of you, and after such a loss, where you are in both mental and physical pain, from tears and the literal feeling of a hole in your chest, you are in no place to handle the loss of the best side of you being taken from you, with the people whom you stopped talking to for the person that just left. Who can blame you? The cliche phrase of its just high school, can so often mean more. Your first kiss, inspiration, biggest reason to smile, and close ally can hardly be wrapped up by people saying “there is more fish in the sea”, for the tired fisherman/woman has no time to chase what they appear to be mere catfish to the merlin of what they loss. But the silver lining in the bombs going off in your mind, is that your building stronger as a person. So typical the old break up phase. Tears, hatred, jealousy, the beginnings of running after being hit on the ground by working out and pursuing old hobbies and friends, the eventual casting off of the depression which you hardly want to keep holding onto but don’t know how to let go, and then the merging happy with your old friends regained, and hobbies bring you joy again. But upon deeper reflection, what really are you happy about? The forgetting of a past love? That your strength is regained and ready to “cast the line and go fishing”? It doesn't appear to be so, since rebounds always end in heart break, or at least crashing after your intentions were not out of finding love but forgetting it. No, it comes from you finding out exactly why you were happy before, because you were happy for yourself, and that you always could be, and you just forgot how to be. But what if this break up process kept going on, and after you kept the hobbies and friends, you kept working at them still instead of starting the cycle again? You’d find that all along the mirage that it was “you two against the world” was false. In truth, a relationship can and often does bring out the best in a person, but this is because of the love you find in them, the compassion, and joy you did not have before. But the real joke of it is, that love, compassion and joy, is only a very lacking supplement of another greater, more powerful and never ending love, compassion and joy, which would crush the cycle of love, loss, and life again. Once you realize this, you can begin to understand what exactly the phrase “A woman's heart should be so hidden in Christ that a man should have to seek Him first to find her.” means. ( the poem’s title is "When I say, 'I am a Christian'" by Carol Wimmer) This is NOT a rule God has placed so that his glory remains in his believers, for his glory could be no more diminished by this than a man could make a dark room light by yelling obsence things at the darkness demanding it go away. This is rather, a guide God has set up for both parties of a relationship. After the first and greatest love is found, the cycle broken, and the person wrapped up in their purpose of finding fulfillment, it is then that they are ready to find someone whom they can find the secondary love and compassion with, but do not mistake this for permanent love and compassion, it is, and always will be, a secondary love, never possible to match, overpower, or even come close to that of the first of the Almighty. They are ready because, they can land on their two feet, with the love of God between them, not simply the regular “high school relationship” , and once it ends, if the love of God has remained within them, they can find peace and strength in him, knowing that truly the piece that completed them was God, not each other. For all those suffering in the pain of a broken relationship, my heart goes out to you. I know of the feelings of pain, and the sick irony of only forgetting the person, to remember you forgot, and to remember again. But there is much hope, and there is much to learn from this. We can never know God’s plan, it has been made long before the earth was even created, and only in retrospect can we truly say “ah, i see now what you were doing. thank you for not granting my silly prayers which would lead away from that path” Much like God made the Pharaoh hard headed, not willing to accept Moses demand to let his people free, we can never know what emotions and qualities God instills in people and for what reason, and we must not pretend too. Only, focus on the rebuilding process of yourself, and you might be surprised by Joy in looking for Christ during this process. Khalil Gibran puts it this way “Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self, so therefore, trust the physician and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility.” Trust in the physician, for your understanding is your growth in knowledge, like breaking down your muscles when working out, only so they can grow stronger. Do not seek revenge, or keep hatred within your heart, for no one but the devil, not even you holding them in, will be happy in doing so. Keep up the good fight my friends, heartbreak is just a hard stone on the difficult path we walk on barefoot to go through the narrow gates of God.
- Nathan Boone
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
