Whether we realize it or not, we all chase different achievements in life: approval from others, expensive cars, perfect partners, good food, beautiful homes, recognition, education, or just a comfortable stable life. Yet, many people still feel empty after reaching these goals. This recurring theme has happened everywhere, across all cultures and times.
This void often leads to the idea of spirituality, which is basically the idea that humans are more than just molecular structures and desire something deeper than achievements we can see with naked eyes. Consider beauty: we universally respond to serene mountain landscapes, blooming flowers, the feeling of being loved, sincere smiles, pleasing patterns, and melodic sounds. Beauty exists, undeniably. It’s pointless to argue about beauty’s existence. Because pondering about why does beauty exist is the same thing as pondering why murder and rape are wrong. It would just cause David Hume’s “is-ought” kind of philosophical problem. I’ll not get deeper into that, so if you agree that beauty exists, let’s proceed.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, the renowned author of Crime and Punishment, wrote in his novel The Idiot that
“Beauty will save the world.”
This statement might seem simplistic, even naive, given our reality of pain, depression, and war.
What can beauty save? How can beauty save? And in a world where a banana taped to a wall is considered high art, what does beauty even mean?
Dostoevsky, despite his own suffering, elaborated in a letter to his niece:
“All writers, not ours alone but foreigners also, who have sought to represent Absolute Beauty, were unequal to the task, for it is an infinitely difficult one. The beautiful is the ideal; but ideals, with us as in civilized Europe, have long been wavering. There is in the world only one figure of absolute beauty: Christ. That infinitely lovely figure is, as a matter of course, an infinite marvel.”
As a former hateful agnostic turned Christian, I’ve contemplated this for some time. How could Dostoevsky, who experienced a miserable life, identify Christ as absolute beauty?
Jordan Peterson offers insight, noting that the Gospel endures because it’s “impossible to write more tragically” by depicting the best possible person enduring the worst possible scenario.
This perspective revealed Christ’s extreme humility to me: an omnipotent God becoming a lowly human, living not as royalty, a rich businessman, a powerful general, or a respected philosopher, but as a humble carpenter. He proceeded to deliberately craft a specific situation where they would kill him in one of the most gruesome execution techniques known by man. Simply by this we can all agree to call him the ultimate fool, even people of the first century called him a fool.
But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;
–an excerpt of St. Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians
But ironically, this ultimate fool is considered as the “absolute beauty” by Dostoevsky. How can we empirically assess this? To start, his birth remains our calendar’s reference point. His teachings have shaped Western civilization’s moral framework, influenced art and literature for two millennia, and established principles that birthed modern human rights, education, and healthcare systems. The most printed and translated book in history tells his story. Ivy league universities like Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, and Oxford were originally founded to study his words. Even non-believers acknowledge this fool as one of history’s most influential figures. That’s extraordinary for a simple carpenter!
A church father named Athanasius wrote in his work De Incarnatione Verbi Dei,
“God became man so that man might become god.”
This profound idea of Christ’s incarnation suggests something remarkable: the universe exists to be experienced by our consciousness, and our consciousness exists to personally witness the beauty of this divine creation. Like a master artist who steps into his own painting to invite the figures within to fully appreciate his work, this entity entered our reality through Christ. This unique intimate and personal connection between Creator and creation points to an extraordinary purpose. We’re not merely observers of beauty, but participants in it. Through Christ’s example, we’re invited to see the world not just with our eyes, but with the very consciousness that crafted it. This is eerily beautiful.
Through this journal that I call Everyday Pilgrim Journal, I’m embarking on a search for divine beauty in everyday life. Not only as a nerdy scholar analyzing books, but also as a simple observer of daily moments. I want to approach this like a gentle form of asceticism. I’m not seeking to glorify hardships, but to train my eyes to recognize beauty within them. My hope is to discover these glimpses of beauty in the small things.
As I continue this journey of seeking beauty, the main questions I’ll ponder are these:
How can the ultimate fool also be the ultimate beauty?
And how can we find the ultimate beauty’s presence in all the beauty we can observe around us?
In pondering the paradox of Christ’s life who is the omnipotent God becoming a humble carpenter, the “absolute beauty” who was mocked and crucified, I hope to uncover glimpses of deep meaning that can transform the way I see the world. Perhaps by exploring this weird tension between the beauty and the seemingly foolish, I can learn to recognize the divine in the ordinary, and be inspired to see beauty in all things. This is the challenge and the promise that will guide me forward.
If you’ve found your way here, perhaps you too sense that there’s more to life than what meets the eye. We’re all pilgrims in this sad world, each seeking glimpses of something in our own way. Whether you choose to start your own beauty-seeking journal or simply wanna pause more often to notice life’s sacred moments, I invite you to join this quiet journey. After all, maybe that’s what we all are, fellow travelers looking up from our daily struggles, searching for ultimate beauty that remind us we’re part of something greater.
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