John Armstrong writes “To regard beauty as a luxury adornment or a social signifier was to miss the true potential of the experience” in his essay “La Bella Vita. I think that this statement means that if we focus too much on the material aspect of beauty rather than the experience then we will miss it. To perceive something as beautiful is more of an experience rather than a physical object. It is a feeling and if we get too caught up in the material then we will never see true beauty. I view beauty as something that is perceived differently from person to person. Something that appears beautiful to one person might not be given a second thought from another. Armstrong references the popular thought that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and says “people are delighted by wildly variant things and that’s how it should be, the thinking goes–so don’t get worked up trying to figure out which things are beautiful.” I don’t think we have to “figure out” which things are beautiful but we just feel that they are without thinking. I feel that the community here at the University of New England holds beauty in high regard. The people here take pride in the aesthetic of our campus and also the close-knit feel of the community. I think that we find beauty in making connections with each other and finding our passion in our studies.
Nice free write. An opportunity for going deeper: What do you think the values/things a community prides say about that community?