The dust of a thousand labours

Beauty is medicine.

It can dry tears, raise spirits, calm stress and nurture the soul.

I don’t like to write about my personal life too much - but to be honest, I have been feeling really quite low recently with lots of stressful stuff happening behind the scenes here.

So as a kind of attempted antidote (or at least, to even up the score in my own psyche), I have been taking myself out on these little daytrips, with the sole intention of just looking at beautiful things.

Most of these trips have included many hours spent watching the world pass by from a train - followed by even more time just walking and walking and walking until my legs feel barely able to even hold my weight up anymore.

But while the spring sun and the first blossoms have been quite enchanting this year - I have found myself gravitating much more towards architecture recently, because it helps to remind me of what hard work and persistence can achieve.

I mean, nature’s beauty always seems so effortless.

A flower is beautiful simply because it is impossible for it to be otherwise. And the same can be said with sunsets, rolling hills, trees, ocean waves or mountain tops. In fact, even through the depths of a dark winter - when the land itself might be battered by a raging storm . . . still, there is this innate sense of the sublime in our world. A kind of “terribilità” - which has always been here, and will last as long as there is a sun above us.

Whereas with something like a great building - the beauty is far less assured.

Here, we find something that can only be made by years (or sometimes decades) of intellectual struggle, back breaking labour and overcoming countless other challenges.

So, I suppose that is why this particular form of beauty is resonating with me so much at the moment.

It is a reminder that from out of the dust and noise of a thousand labours . . . a substantial and long lasting beauty can be built.

And I can only hope that this will be reflected in my own life eventually too.

Catch a flight on future dreams
Or walk down memory lane.

Travel so far from where you're from
Until you're on the way back home again

Wander the world with foolish pride
While hiding secret shame.

To live this life is a gamblers game;

And to love . . . is much the same.

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