By John Paraskevopoulos
Most of us come back from the beach with seashells, lots of Vitamin D, wind-swept hair and sand in our shoes. John Paraskevopoulos came back with this piece. I am delighted blog readers are first to read it...
This last Spring Break was one of the best weeks of my life. I thought a lot about what made it so special, wherefrom came that resonant pleasure in each day that filled me so, and made me happy to be alive. I thought about the Wednesday of our spring break, when I had the joy of going to the beach with a group of some of my best friends, and I had a beautiful day. Coming back from the beach, I was utterly content with life. The next day, I was still content.
I am a person who has had extensive experience with depression in my past, who has sat on railroad tracks in the dark of night waiting to be done in, who has felt the deepest depths of despair, and wanted nothing more than to die; and, lying in the afternoon sun that following day, I could not find a reason in the whole of the world to be unhappy. I thought about the sound of the ocean, of the tide: its hum, and rhythm, and its breathtaking yet passive power; and the warmth of the sun and the way the sand feels in your toes, and the taste of good food and the smiles and laughs of friends; the pretty white dress Amber wore, and the perfect blue shade of the sky, and the green of the trees coming down Highway 17. I pondered, and I wondered why I was suddenly so content, and I realized it was because I had had just that: a beautiful day. I became reminded of the power of beauty to bring pleasure, and touch the soul.
It would seem to me, that in this world there is a higher truth to be found in beauty, and, more than that, a constant truth. When, to even (or especially) the largest questions, the universe offers no answers, and the human cognition fails in man’s everlasting search for meaning, Beauty is always there to warm the heart; to comfort, and to bring pleasure. When rationality fails to satisfy our deeper senses, Beauty always can, on an irrational level. When and where other truths fail to be consistent, Beauty remains always.
There is a transcendent power to beauty, too, through which we find that higher truth; and I speak not only of aesthetic beauty, but also the beauty that is to be found in everything, large and small and even intangible. When we become lost in artwork, or the notes of beautiful music, or the depth of another person’s eyes, or the poetry of a landscape, it is beauty’s work, elevating us beyond the “getting and spending,” so to speak, of ordinary awareness.
I thought more, and I thought more of what it means to be alive. I remembered coming down Highway 17, and thinking about the trees we passed by. How long had each been there? The specific answer would not be worthwhile, but, I imagined time-lapse footage of the growth of one tree, and I tried to conceive of how many sunrises and sunsets that tree had seen, how many cars had passed it, and how much change had occurred with the tree as a witness, in the drivers who passed by without notice, and the styles, and the cars, and the road itself. Reflecting on this later, I thought of myself. My experiences in life are meager and do not yet amount to much, but I imagined all of the cumulative steps my father and mother each took in their respective lives; all of their cumulative breaths; each and every of their struggles; and then the steps, struggles, and breaths of each of their parents; and their parents, and their parents. I thought of the road we traveled down, the highway, and the car: every individual man who sweated in the construction of each, his breaths, steps, and struggles. Life is a great, singular experiment, and a fantastic endeavor that each of us participates in. We all breathe the same air, together. Our collective history is summed up in textbooks but our individual histories are incalculable and inconceivable, and amount each to monuments of astounding wonder. I later could not find a single reason to be unhappy because of the weight of the history I saw around me, and its absolute beauty. To ignore that beauty, to be sorrowful in spite of the efforts, the energy of every step of each of my ancestors, taken under weights and burdens of sometimes the most extreme gravity, to deliver me to my current position, would be a dishonor to those who carried those weights.
What is the meaning of life I could not rightly say to anybody; but what it means to be alive is something different, and appears to me to be cognizance. It appears to me to be awareness of one’s existence; but not just awareness that one exists; instead, more fully, the awareness of the beauty of one’s existence, and awareness of the beauty that surrounds us all.
Sometimes tragedy strikes, and tragedy is inexplicable. Sadness will forever be unavoidable. It is part of us all and it is part of our histories likewise. But sometimes all it takes are pictures to remind us of the beauty of life. And, though death will always bring grief, I think of my own death and I smile at the thought of grass or a flower growing from atop my grave. Earth is a single organism and even as I die, life will continue, and the person I sculpted into myself will remain in the hearts of those who knew me.
I would like to see our generation as a generation dedicated to observance of what it means to be alive. I would like our generation to be a generation dedicated to happiness, and each other. Such awareness and cognizance and dedication and clairvoyance would be difficult to attain, and I cannot attest to possessing any myself, but I dream of someday being able to wake up every morning and first thing say to myself, before allowing myself to be distracted by mercenary and immediate needs, “I am in paradise.”
We are young, but each of us carries a huge untapped potential, and I would like to see us recognize and use it. I speak not of societal potential, the potential to earn money or rise in rank, but the greater potential: the potential to bring those things that are good and beautiful to those around us; the potential to make other people happy, sometimes with only our presence. Through thick and thin, tragedy and agony, the one thing I have found in this world to be the surest guarantee of happiness, the one thing that most surely brought me contentment that Wednesday at the beach, is that blissful romance of time spent with one’s ideal comrades, my friends whom I love.
Thank you.
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