Truth and Beauty: All We Need is Love

Truth and Beauty – needed more than ever!

I first published this post here in 2015. Recently, I’ve been thinking about it again, so thought I’d re-post it. The Beatles: All we need is love. Keates: Truth and Beauty. I’ll take all three any day.

From 2015

Don’t know about you, but I’ve been focusing on trying to be more thankful for what freedoms and joys we actually have … especially for beauty when I see it or hear it or feel it these days. Which has prompted me to wonder, thanks to a famous poem, about beauty’s relationship to truth. What is truth? What is beauty? According to poet, John Keats, they are more than kissing cousins.

“They” say that keeping a gratitude list helps cultivate an attitude that brings more satisfaction in life. I’ve been doing that lately and think this list-making is having an effect. For instance, I felt that the music played during a yoga class was strikingly beautiful, so I thanked the instructor.

Orchid gems

Another instance of beauty sighting: the purple orchid hanging outside in our yard seems more vibrant than usual. I stopped my rush to the car and examined it for a few minutes. Perhaps being more grateful has something to do with being more mindful, taking a few extra seconds to acknowledge someone or something and making a connection.

Paying attention to NOW brings its rewards. How very Buddhist.

What has gratitude done for you lately?

Gratitude cultivation, for some mysterious reason, has also made me think of poetry more often. John Keats’ phrase “Beauty is truth” floats in and out of my awareness like background music almost every day. For a good many years of my life I thought truth was found only in the Bible, but you know what? It can be found everywhere. Just look. Listen.

I have been fortunate to have traveled the world and seen many a Grecian urn in Greece. I’ve observed close-up what Keats was writing about. Love it!

The Poetry Foundation’s website tells us:

“John Keats, who died at the age of twenty-five, had perhaps the most remarkable career of any English poet. He published only fifty-four poems, in three slim volumes and a few magazines.”

Here’s the last part of his remarkable, Ode on a Grecian Urn:

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

With forest branches and the trodden weed;

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

When old age shall this generation waste,Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”