It’s no wonder we hold onto things…it feels painful for experiences that we enjoy to end. Just today, after watching the conclusion of the television series Station Eleven, I felt the same touched bewilderment that I do after other similar experiences of beauty. It’s a mix bag; gratitude for the ride, sadness that its over, slow integration back into the reality of life although changed none-the-less. Beautiful experiences offer an upgrade of the purest sort with very little effort needed other than our willingness to let them move us where we want to be moved. I find art, in its many forms - film, television, music, painting, writing - does that for me in the most easeful of ways. And I love that I let it. It can be easy to deny ourselves the experience of being moved by beauty because of the existence of fear that such beauty won’t always be present. Yet, that is missing the point of beauty altogether.

Beauty is timeless and time-sensitive. The beauty that lives inside the creation of Station Eleven can always be accessed now that I has been created. I can watch it again and again, if I wish, and each time, I’ll revisit old touch points while discovering new ones that touch each new me. And at the same time, nothing can bring back today’s tears; tears that flowed from experiencing something for a first moment in time. We simply can’t go back. I felt my rather forceful urge to pause my iPad so I could revel in feeling the incredibly joy of watching the plot’s two main characters hug each other after twenty years apart; my human attempt at prolonging the inevitable next breath. But I let myself go into the ride of the moment instead of fighting it.

I’m thankful for these reminders of beauty, of its great impermanence and great immortality, and I’m thankful for the interwoven moments of aliveness that I experience through the expression of aliveness in others. We need not go far outside of ourselves to experience the beauty that lives almost exclusively within us. We just need to let it.