Beauty and Trash.
I named this blog that because I find the ever-constant struggle we humans fight between these two things fascinating. We are drawn to beauty. We crave it, we revel in it, we collect it and we create it.
And then we destroy it.
Why is that? Why build something glorious, just to watch it decay? Why create with so much care and joy, only to then let those creations sit in dust and darkness? How can we experience raw, soul-wrenching wonder at the natural beauty of this world in one moment, just to throw trash out of the car window the next?
Is it lack of education? Apathy? A reflection on human life — the truth of our existence? You live, you grow, you build something (hopefully) beautiful, and then you die. And a hundred years later, you are lucky if your grandchildren even know your name. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you my great grandparents names. Granted, I have a horrible memory, but I doubt most of you know them either. Life is fleeting, and no matter how much you strive for permanence or how fervently you believe that something comes after, the truth is…
You live. You grow. You build something or not. And then you die.
And not a single one of us knows for sure if anything happens after that. So maybe we humans destroy what we build preemptively; we certainly do enough other things that way. Preemptive drone strikes, preemptive let downs. While hoping for the best, we prepare constantly for the worst. While building something beautiful, we constantly trample over the beauty that was already there.
A spectacular crashing of opposites; the dichotomy that is the human condition.