Beauty makes us a promise it can’t ever deliver.
A promise of complete salvation.
If/when attained completely, it promises to save us from not just the world’s but our own negative views about ourselves.
But it’s not just beauty that does this. The notions of wisdom, goodness, strength, and abundance also make us promises of unshackling that they can’t ever deliver on. Even our dreams promise us that they’ll absolutely save us from the world and ourselves.
This is one of the things that’s always confused me about being human.
That, although the truth will set us free, at our core, we very much like our impossible promises of total salvation. That, although the truth will set us free, we very much like lying to ourselves. Need to lie to ourselves even.
Strip us of all of our beautiful beliefs that lie to us, that promise to us deliverance that will never truly be, and what are we left with? In essence, absolutely nothing. Unmitigated truth isn’t just heartbreaking, it’s life-breaking. It’s suicide by another name. For who are we if not our flawed beliefs that keep us waking up every morning? Telling someone to live in truth and nothing but in truth is akin to telling them, “Hey, trust me, in order to live perfectly anew you must first kill yourself (of every this-will-save-me belief that’s keeping you whole).”
And you can’t wish death upon someone like that. Or even expect them to trust you when you’re so blatantly telling them to kill themselves. For, again, who are we if not our flawed saviour beliefs that keep us waking up every morning? We wouldn’t recognize ourselves without them. So you’ve got to be crazy to think anyone’s going to take a leap of death/faith for you like that. “Like, who the fuck do you think you are? God in the flesh? Hahahaha.”
So what’s to be done for anyone stupid enough to want a little more people on Earth to live in absolute truth?
Well, I guess T. S. Eliot found the answer a while ago. He said, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality,” and got to writing. The only safe havens for absolute truth, in reality, seem to be fiction, music, and that thing in between called poetry. The only path to being anyone resembling truth in this world seems to be to tell and to listen to bald-faced lies told with an honest heart on the verge of utter and complete heartbreak.
But that’s less a path to moral sincerity and more of a very fine ledge. And better people than T. S. Eliot have failed to capture how to walk it, arms and heart wide open, without being consumed by the many lies or excruciating truthfulness. Let alone I.
Sometimes, when you’re stripped of all pretences of beauty, wisdom, goodness, strength, and abundance, the only true thing you can really say is, “Good luck.”