beautiful.

For the past couple of weeks, I have been trying to stay up on my current events. My father used to make me read all the sections of the paper before I could read the sports. It was to make sure that I was aware of the events that surround me. So I would never be caught unaware of situations that could effect me, my people, or the populace, of which I am apart. So, even with his passing, I try to keep up the practice. It was a struggle then. It is a struggle now. I read the paper, and watch the news. I go to news websites, and click on all of the hyperlinks. I listen to NPR. And everytime I take a step towards immersing myself in the knowledge of the world, something in me shudders and retreats from this information. For a while, I never knew why. Now I do. The news is ugly. And when confronted with true, unadulterated ugliness, we all have a reaction. My soul shudders.
I realize that there is no getting away from the part of life that is truly ugly. The truth is ugly is what I have always heard. The truth about this world is that it is filled with ugly people, who are in ugly situations, and who do ugly things. This has nothing to do with asthetics. And the news lets me see that. The truth is that is world is also beautiful. With beautiful people, in beautiful situations, who do beautiful things. This beauty serves to sustain us in times of bleek desperation and persistant despair. Oil to a lamp, air to a flame; the fuel necessary for a reasonably sane existance. But maybe because we are shown so much of the ugly in this world, we then seek it out. In those times where we need a recharge of beauty, we surround ouselves the opposite. We wake up and hear of someone dying. We go to work and pass by someone sleeping in the gutter. Today, I had a homeless man ring on the doorbell of my office building, wrapped in a blanket, corvered in sores, and in search of anything. He swore me up an down that he needed 10 dollars to eat, and that my 1 dollar wasn't going to help. He swore to me that he wasn't going to use the money for drugs. He proceeded across the street to cop some. A fight breaks out on the bus between a older woman and a younger one, while the latters child watches on with intent amazement. And after all of that, I go to a bar? Or maybe a club. Maybe I call up some of my friends to talk about what girl we know has the fattest ass, and who would hit. Smoke some green and travel the streets seeing what we can get into. It's like chasing crack with heroin.
I'm face to face with unavoidable shitty situations, then I voluntarily follow it up with even more?
I can't shake this concept of beauty. It seems like I forget for weeks at a time, then something reminds me. Tonight, it was The Last Samurai. "The perfect blossom is a rare thing. You could spend your life looking for one, and it would not be a wasted life."
Why don't we all spend our lives seeking out such beauty when we can? I know, I know. It's not realistic. A movie. But I know you have never tried. Maybe then, we all won't be so tired, upset, frustrated, desolate, alone, needy, abused, sad, mistreated, underappreciated. Because those are all feelings that are brought upon by being sought out, they never just appear. Let us instead just look for it, those moments of beauty. Then maybe we won't have time to notice the ugliness that surrounds us. And then, we will be in a better, happier position to transform all of the...everything.