God. The Tao. Brahman. Buddha-nature. It can all get pretty mystical, pretty heady, pretty quick.
And it can all be so much simpler, so much more basic.
Think of a sunset on a summer’s night. Or a budding flower. Or the sound of a babbling brook. The countless different little things throughout the world that make us feel a little more connected to ourselves and the world, a little warmer, a little lighter, a little more free.
We all instinctively move toward these phenomena. We seek them out. We bask in them. We nourish ourselves through them.
We do this so naturally and instinctively that we rarely stop to consider it. What is actually happening here? What value can we possibly get from simply observing a sunset?
In these moments, we are tapping into the nourishment of basic goodness. We are filling up our cups, warming our beds, fertilizing our soil simply by beholding beauty.
Beauty is one of goodness’s core forms, along with kindness, play, and rest, and perhaps others.
Our near-universal experiences of beauty, kindness, play, and rest are direct evidence of basic goodness. Perhaps the only evidence one could even conceivably provide for such a foundational assertion.
This is an excerpt from my upcoming book The Antihero’s Journey: From Burnout to Real Contribution in Polycrisis Times. To read other excerpts, go here.
