“It’s the same fucking rock, just closer!”

The given quote has caused quite a stir within me. On one hand, I wanted to tell that person that they understand shit about the beauty of nature and that they need to open themselves up, on the other hand I didn’t want to spoil my own appreciation of said beauty by quarreling with someone who just doesn’t live on the same wavelength as myself.

One fact of life is that beauty, and I mean true beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder, meaning it’s exclusively subjective, and thus not subject to any measureable values. I want to address that subjectivity, and also talk about what nature really has to offer, maybe even change a few minds in the process.

See the same rock twice

The Blue Grotto on Malta might just be one of the most beautiful places on earth. And some people just can’t see it. In fact, the quote from the beginning is something I overheard exactly at that Grotto. It gave me a general idea of how we lost the beauty of our planet to mindless consumerism. People look at their phones most of the time, spend too much time overloading and overstimulating their senses to a point where they don’t feel any real feelings anymore, only to be annoyed when they get to see what nature can create without human intervention.

Of course it is a shame to see that many people have lost this understanding of what our planet has to offer. But it gets worse, the more we think about all the vanity going around when it comes to the perversion of beauty.

I’d like 2 pounds of silicone!

We as humans have become obsessed with our perverted version of what we tend to call “beauty standards”, which is a term I absolutely despise. Beauty cannot be standardized, and the fact that we have trends supporting the Idea of standardized beauty shows how far we have fallen. To destroy what nature gave us, we started chopping people off to fix their appearance, we started injecting biohazardous material into people’s faces, cut up the women’s breasts to fill them with sillicone to make them appear bigger than they should be.

What I want to address is the so-called “beauty industry”, which preys upon the insecurity of certain people by marketing their products and services as the desire and envy of all. Starting with makeup, it already makes billions upon billions of dollars. Accounting for plastic surgery, where we take the gift of nature and pervert it through fake implants in the name of beauty, we can clearly see that humanity has become obsessed with all things that are in vain.

Still, there are some things that people misunderstand when they use their body as a canvas to be chopped, sliced and painted.

Mother Nature, the best artist of them all

As with the rocks in the Blue Grotto, and many other places, they have all been formed by the tides of days long gone, mother nature playing her integral part in creating these works of art over millenia, making them into the beautiful sceneries that we know to love today. Calling nature the greatest artist is an understatement.

Through just existing, the earth formed some truly breathtaking locations, monuments of the sheer power of nature, which even manages to take back the land when humanity has abandoned it.

It’s all about the mindset

Observing beauty is strictly tied to our mindset, our mental health and ability and willingness to grow. The people who think of a cliff or a grotto as “just rocks”, they don’t seem to want to grow out of their bubbles. Yet they are the loudest when it comes to “unfair beauty standards” (which, as mentioned before, are stupid).

Those who see the monumental power of nature to create a spectacle, they are rewarded with the view of a lifetime, and with the knowledge that beauty can be found everywhere.

Conclusion

Our planet formed just about over a billion years ago, and in this time, it has formed itself into the planet we know today. And yet, all we do is look into devices all the time, giving in to the temptations of vanity, hedonism and pride. We need to return to a more conscious lifestyle in conjunction with nature, and stop looking at a rock as “Just a rock”.