A personal manifesto
The world around us is complex and beautiful. We are all very lucky to be part of it. Too bad we are here only for such a short time. (Or just imagine being a common housefly, Musca domestica, that has a lifespan of about 15 to 30 days. If you are a housefly, you don’t plan months ahead.)
Yet, if you are a housefly, you probably have less existential anxiety than a human being. You don’t fear death, because you don’t have a concept of it (and you are not self-conscious anyway).
As a human being, you know your time is limited, and being greedy, you would probably perceive life as being too short regardless of how long it actually was.
But being humans, we are able to notice beauty in every corner of the Universe, from the big pictures to the tiniest details. Sometimes beauty is apparent, sometimes we have to look a bit harder. But no doubt, beauty is everywhere, waiting to be noticed.
(A neuroscientist would probably describe “beauty” as a subjective experience that emerges from complex interactions between specific brain regions, cognitive processes, personal experiences, cultural norms, and potentially evolutionary factors. However, for now, it’s not important how we define beauty, whether as a mysterious feeling or a complex neural activity. Let’s just say beauty refers to something some of us really like for some unexplained reason.)
What is more important is that the Universe is a pretty huge place, full of beauty, but due to many random factors affecting our attention, each of us start to notice beauty in different things. A mathematician can derive a similar intense appreciation of beauty from a nonlinear equation, just as a composer does from a sequence of chords.
All human beings are equipped with a different selection of beauty sensors. We are all different. In my eyes, that’s yet another manifestation of beauty.
I have a simple phylosophy. I think we are here to enjoy ourselves. Or to put it another way, to enjoy all the beauty we notice around us. Even if there is no real purpose of our existence, the world is so damn interesting, there is so much beauty and interestingness out there, that living with open eyes, open ears, and open mind can give us more than enough fun for the limited time we spend on this planet.
There are many different ways of having fun though. Reading a book in a quiet room might induce the same amount of adrenaline as dancing your ass off in a hardcore Acid Techno party. You can find beauty and joy in a flower, a plate of chocolate raspberry cake, a rock, a smile, a sentence, an old furniture, an integrated circuit, a toilet pump, or an architectural drawing. It is up to you what kind of fun you go for.
Ultimately, you can find beauty in another person, and in yourself.
For me, personally, it was my wife, Brigi, who taught me to notice the beauty in small things every day.