Beauty and anxiety

Travelling is eternal. Religion also agrees with this. We travel through this life to the afterlife and so on. There are bound to be specific anxieties during these travels and therefore it sure needs some complex planning. 

Parental anxiety

What is an ideal age to travel with a kid? The Internet, like always, is divided. Some say from newborn to 2 years is ideal, others prefer 3-5 years and then there are people who claim 11-13 is the ideal age to introduce kids to adventure sports. In India, the ideal age is as long as a child can travel ticketless. Many of my friends, therefore, claim to have visited certain places as a child. I hope now they know why.

I saw more than 5 parents yesterday who were travelling with newborns. It sure made me anxious. Anxiety is not the worst thing that can happen to an individual. Rather it prepares us for the worst possible thing. What if the bus we are on turns turtle and cuts short these infants' trip? My friend says we are never really safe, what if the ceiling fan falls on our heads,  what if the gas cylinder detonates or someone with a knife and youtube access picks our lock and kills us? I say to him, what if…indeed!

It's not anxiety, it's being prepared for the worst. All these might be anxious thoughts but they are, after all, just thoughts. We can choose to live with them as long as it does not overpower our general grip on reality, our dependence on creating a complex plan, and contingencies around the thoughts of an anxious brain. Worst expectations are part of rational preparation and efficient outcomes. For most, It is hard to imagine the world upside down, it would mean the negation of concepts and theories that primarily governs the world as it is. With anxiety at your side, you are well prepared if the world turns turtle. 

Similarly, a lot can be achieved from general distrust. In the darkness, what is heard and touched but not seen opens up a sea of fearful imaginations. With general distrust, you can trust one sense without associating with the other. In that, there is fairness and loyalty towards the nearest truth rather than the farthest lie. This distrust is unfortunately not for the poets and the romantics, who do not just perceive beauty but go on describing it. In the darkness, the harmony of the same senses that leads them to beauty will lead them to despair and hysteria. So the anxious seeks beauty but does not go on to perceive or describe it. They touch it dispassionately, with general distrust, independent of the sensorium and as part of their eternal darkness.   

Some basis for trust and beauty 

Of senses, there are several rules for their uses. For example, flowers smell good but taste bad and so we refrain from directly consuming them. We however cannot smell the taste, see the touch or touch the smell or smell the sound and so on. These limitations prevent what can be truly made out of the beauty and how to sensually or spiritually perceive it. This disharmony of perception causes distrust. 

Anxiety serves as the basis for trust and beauty and helps describe it. Beauty is not dependent on complex plans and building contingencies around anxious thoughts. Rather, beauty is the infant who is unaware of its mortality and becomes eternal. Like eternal travelling and eternal darkness, beauty too is eternal but it can hardly be perceived or described by the senses that can create plans and contingencies, can conjure up great evil or good at will, can be sheepish, fawnish and can be dispassionately anxious.