Beauty Will Survive

Beauty may not save the world, but it can do more than that: beauty will survive.

There is no reason to worry or feel insecure about the fate of beauty.

Beauty will be okay.

Beauty is, always has been, even in deep time, and the future will not be any different.

This prediction cannot be supported, but it is true: beauty needs nothing to be.

Beauty flirts with and seduces nihilism, with total hope.

The universal beauty of things — the world, history, eternity, and what may live beyond these things — is profound and rich, intimate and distant.

There is nothing to contrast or bemoan or get angry about, nothing to chase down or figure out.

The problems will not end — they will surely multiply and swell and get better for a little while.

The power of beauty is not good at feeding or fixing.

There is nothing beauty can do except be and endure.

There is no easy consolation until the beautiful becomes the beloved.

Even then, nothing changes, death comes.

But beauty survives and love is there, with nothing to show for it.