Surfing and Beauty

It was dusk. Sitting on my surfboard, I watched the soft orange sun slip into the horizon like a coin into a slot. The wind was gentle from the north. The waves were small, barely rideable, but fun. Wave after wave broke on a good sandbar and I rode wave after wave to the beach.

Just before dark with the sky ablaze with supernatural hues of pink, purple and blue, I found myself in awe. No one on the beach. Only me in the water. Perfectly shaped small waves. And beauty. Such beauty. Everywhere. I was reminded of the line by the Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore, “Beauty is truth’s smile when she beholds her own face in a perfect mirror.”

Appreciation of beauty—aesthetics—is more than being able to check out a good-looking person sunning on the beach. Appreciation of beauty, from my experience, takes work and practice. Attention and intention are required. A certain quietness of mind is needed, and this quietness of mind is not easily had in our fractured, traffic-clogged culture.

Sex appeal is often mislabeled as beauty—tricking boy and girls, men and women into thinking that beauty is the same as physical impact.  Sex appeal has its place. But sex appeal is not the same as beauty. Beauty comes from a deeper realm. It is transcendent. It is not necessarily sensual and may not be erotic. Beauty is healing. It is transformative. It inspires the beholder to greater awareness of the universe—and God. Beauty is also a portal by which the surfer touches deeper layers of surfing.

I am not alone in thinking that beauty is transcendent. The theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas included beauty among his transcendent qualities of being. For Aquinas, a person or thing is beautiful if it possesses wholeness, harmony and radiance. When these three elements come together the transcendence of being is experienced. Or, in other words, beauty can make you aware of a higher plane of existence. Beauty happens in the moment.

In ancient Koine Greek (the Greek of the New Testament), beauty reflects a right moment in time. Stemming from the word for “hour,” beauty was associated with the proper time of someone or something—a ripe fruit, for example, would be beautiful, as would an athlete at his or her peak performance.

Such was the moment when I sat on my board in awe of the sinking sun, an empty beach and the riding of waves. It was a perfect moment. It was beautiful. Full of wholeness, harmony and radiance. As I sat on my board, I couldn’t help but wonder how different our culture would be if we focused on these qualities when determining beauty—rather than the standards set by Hollywood.