Beholden to Beauty
Beauty isn't just seen; it's a debt we owe to our souls, repaid in gratitude and wonder.
The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.
Beholden to Beauty
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
Modernity considers this a trope. One that is overused and overvalued, which is a mistake. We dispense of our reverence and respect for beauty at the expense of both the beauty itself and the value it provides.
We often omit to investigate what we see as common or old to find out what it contains. In this case, it contains the secret to seeing beauty in the mundane and the everyday. It contains the secret to gratitude.
To behold is to perceive or to see, specifically or especially regarding the amazing and the remarkable. That can be extrapolated using the context in the above quote and in the usage across time of the word.
What a wonderful word. Six letters to express amazement or awe about something witnessed.
But what if I was able to behold something at a prior time? What is that past tense? Was I beholden? I beheld? Beheld is correct. A simple transition from the present verb to the past tense.
Not overly complicated, but what about beholden? That is a word after all. Why is that not correct?
To be beholden is to owe a debt. Or, more specifically, to owe favor or to owe thanks due to something that has been given to or done for you. What a shift in meaning. How exactly is it that those words are so dissimilar?
Linguistics is a beautiful study and field, if you’re interested. While it may not result in your own artistic prowess in the manipulation of language, it will allow you to better appreciate minor deviations artists and writers use to paint pictures and messages for their readers.
And linguistics also helps us understand how the disparity between the definitions of behold and beholden happened.
While it is interesting that they have disparate definitions, the answer is rather routine. But there’s beauty in that as well. These changes and differences happen throughout time with the language we rely on.
It’s natural and comes about genuinely, without outside input most times. A collaboration between speakers of the language without ever knowing they did so. Wonderful.
Beholden did mean to behold. In other words, it was at one point the past tense of behold. However, as time went on and other linguistic conventions popularized, beheld was used more and more in the place of the past tense and participle of behold.
While this transition happened, beholden was used with increasing rapidity to dictate when gratitude and debt was owed.
And that debt, whether it’s financial or service related, whether it is due to owing a display of gratitude, can be owed to any entity, living or objective. A debt of gratitude is a concept and a mindset that can be freeing, despite the appearance of the opposing principle being the intent.
When you owe a debt, you have acquired a need. That being a need to satisfy an obligation of payment. There is power in need.
The implied disparity in the importance of a want versus a need is obvious to even the youngest of children, assuming they have some grasp on language.
A want is a simple desire. There is no obligation to fulfillment. It is acceptable, and at times necessary, to deny yourself or another that want. Most wants are fleeting and shallow, with few exceptions.
But a need is required. The obligation to fulfill a need is felt at a deep and ancient level inside of us. When we consider what the implications of failing to meet a genuine need can be, this becomes self-evident.
Death is on the table here. Needs are vital, that’s why they are needs. Not wants. To be starving is to need. To be dehydrated is to need. To be empty and alone is to need.
Needs are powerful motivators. They are dangerous motivators too, so don’t incur them purposefully with the intent to use them as motivation for something you should have developed discipline to achieve. They should not be taken lightly.
So a debt of gratitude, when framed correctly, starts a worthy and powerful drive within us. It forces us, by virtue of need, to confront what we have in front of us and find something we are thankful for. It is the driving force behind the words “Thank you.”
And the more we work on that gratitude, the easier it gets to implement. A sense of gratitude then becomes more prevalent in our lives. More prevalent in our day to day. And the resistance to gratitude we had in the past becomes more apparent and more absurd as we go along.
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
Intriguing connections between language, time, and places happen often. This is one of my favorites. So, we know that beauty, given the phrase, is reliant on the eye of the beholder. What one sees before them coupled with how they perceive it.
And this is where it gets meaningful. A beholder is beholden to the debtor. Indebted to an entity. Indebted, in this case, to a sight one considers remarkable and amazing.
An indebtedness of gratitude. That gratitude unlocks the ability to behold and appreciate the previously mundane.
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
That is not an observational remark. It wasn’t written flippantly and thoughtlessly as an empty platitude in order to quell an upset child and have them feel better about themselves.
Those are directions, a charge to observe beauty and a way to ensure it happens in all things good. It is a technique to be used in order to start a cycle of gratitude and wonder and the ever-increasing ability to find beauty.
Behold and become beholden. Pay that debt of gratitude and unlock even more potential to see beauty; to behold. And then be beholden. Pay in thanks.
Live your life in beauty, not darkness.
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