Dostoevsky

“Beauty will save the world.” 

The sky is bleak against the bright, artificial lights that emanate from nearby houses. It’s gray, tinged ever so slightly with the undertones of a deep blue. There are no stars. I am lying on the warm asphalt road that stretches throughout my friend’s suburban neighborhood, my eyes directed towards this vast expansion of nothingness that fills my pupils. I can hear myself laughing, the melodic shrills of my voice mixing with another, as we laugh and laugh together in the absurdity of where we are and what we are doing. Time passes ever so slowly and my head fills with millions of thoughts, none able to be pinpointed or retained for more than a few, ephemeral seconds. But, the presence of one overwhelms the rest. 

Beautiful. 

I’m unsure of what I was referring to that night. What exactly was beautiful? The starless sky, so immense and boundless, sprawling across my sight? The way my friend’s glasses sat on her nose, perfectly balanced, protecting the brown eyes that sat below? The perpetual sound of my breath, gentle and light, as fresh air passed in and out of my lungs? 

In essence, what is beauty? 

Fyodor Dostoevsky once said that “beauty will save the world.” Perhaps this belief is born out of some naiveté as we consider the vicious physical turmoil that so surrounds us, seemingly constant and incessant. But, if anyone knew pain, torture, and cruelty, it must have been Dostoevsky: his life, a continuous suffering and a living hell. 

And yet, he found beauty in it. 

Beauty is captivating. It draws you in, pleasing your senses and soothing your nerves, not merely in the physical sense, but the metaphysical: the spiritual, the unseen emotions that dictate our actions, the very being of our humanity that resides in us all. It is subjective to an ideal and yet, the unideal as well, the grotesque even; to see beauty in the world is to see the truth, even in suffering. 

It was moments before I laid on that road that I was crying. Tears would not come out, but I cried. Cried for the life I had lived, the present that I ignored, and the future that so unraveled before me, unclear and hazy under the dark sky. I felt a tightness in my chest; the notion of absurdism now brought me little comfort and my hunt for meaning was halted by the silly hardships of a material world. There was an overwhelming sadness in this, a piercing pain that would not cease. 

And yet, I found beauty in it. 

I write these words not as an answer to my questions about purpose. No. I write as a reminder for all that is beautiful in the world: for the things that secretly hold beauty, much more than we could ever realize. It could be the most miniscule details and yet also the most agonizing suffering; if we fail to notice beauty, we fail to see hope amidst our fleeting existences. 

So, as I continue pursuing meaning, I’ll allow myself to stop. To pause and notice the beauty of an empty sky, so encapsulating and full.