The challenge of Consciousness is to accommodate ourselves to Being. Not to achieve happiness, which defies Reason, but to accept one’s condition – earthbound, insufficient, mortal. The more one thinks, the greater the challenge, because life makes no sense.

                  Many people live without much thought. Like other creatures, they take things as they come without wondering why. While this may be preferable, it is not optional. Intelligence cannot quench itself. Only extinction can arrest a busy brain. 

                  An active mind, like a high-strung horse, must be allowed to gallop. Inquiry, however lamentable, is inevitable. Initial findings about Being tend to be dispiriting. We are born to die – uh-oh. Meaning is a phantom – yikes. Humans are unreliable. How to square such discoveries with equanimity?

                  Many explanations are tested. If it feels good, it is, our senses urge. Love seems an answer until it doesn’t. God is the missing variable. Some say they accept their insignificance, no worries. Any answer that works is right, because none is probable.

                  Beauty is where I alight. Beauty, while it explains nothing, justifies all. For a phrase of music, a rhyme, a flower in the sun, one rejoices to have been born. Life, it turns out, is what we make of it.  While the power of beauty is inexplicable, its effect is undeniable. One may – even, must – pursue it, as the Wise Men pursued their star.

                  Reason resents this conclusion. A haughty despot, Reason insists on its authority. For everything there is a reason, says Reason, you just have to get busy finding it. Endless absurdities derive from this contention. Philosophers lose themselves in a wilderness of words. Theologies turn somersaults. If A is true and B, then C must be true – see?

                  My mind passed through these predictable phases. I ached to believe in my necessity. My parents prescribed Duty, which worked fine until it didn’t. Duty to whom? To do what? Who says?

                  God seduced my frantic innocence. God is the easiest explanation: unknowable, God explains everything by explaining nothing. Why such evil among humans? Why wars, violence, death? God knows!

                  I sought salvation in Ambition. Keep busy enough – yearning, churning – you’ve no time for doubt. I placed myself in perilous predicaments to secure my attention. This too works – until it doesn’t. I won a few prizes, failed to win others – so what?

                  Only Beauty settled my soul. Unlike God, Beauty was real – one could see it, hear it, feel it, no less than lust or the common cold. In aspiration, if seldom in fact, it defied Time. That it had been made before meant it might be again. It was true. Its pursuit was endlessly permissible and impossible: Get going, not a moment to lose. The poorest could possess it, for it lived in mind, not on a wall. “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

                  What was Beauty? What the heart decreed. One could analyze it, unpetal the flower, yet its effect would forever elude Reason as Daphne her divine pursuer. Beauty’s teasing caprice was essential to its appeal: catch me if you can!

                  I am fortunate where I am doing what I must. Bless Consciousness for assisting my evolution. I am accommodated. Moods may swing but not my assurance. I have “come down/ In the place just right,” and, yes, it is “the valley/ Of love and delight.”