Does time, environment and occasion affect our perceptions of beauty? On the corrosion of beauty and how to avoid it

"Every year of my life I grow more convinced that it is wisest and best to fix our attention on the beautiful and the good, and dwell as little as possible on the evil and the false." - Richard Cecil

I'm talking about beauty as in beauty of the world. Typically art, music, nature, or doing things we enjoy, things that us humans have always considered to be beautiful regardless of different tastes.

Recently I bought a Chinese book made up of 1-2 page short very philosophical, mind-opening articles, which I'm loving right now because it's teaching me a lot. I thought I would translate a few of them regularly from now on to pass on the good knowledge. There are a lot of interesting issue it covers, but today I want to focus on this question:

'Does time, environment and circumstance affect our perceptions of beauty?'

You might be sitting here reading this and thinking: of course not. I'm a great admirer of music/art/photography/fashion/etc and time and place does not matter. If I like this designer/artist/musician I will like them no matter what.

But is that really true? Will we always find certain things beautiful/enjoyable? How is it that some people can see beauty around them all the time while others can't?

One day you may be listening to a song that you find beautiful, and another day you might listen to it again and find it really annoying. You might find a book very interesting to read, but when you find out it's by a writer you dislike you automatically disregard it. In fact all these things: time, environment and occasion, they provide us with more knowledge of things we originally liked, eg how others think of them, whether there are better things than them, whether it's embarrassing to like them based on your character etc. Our perception of beauty changes depending on a lot of things around us, and sometimes it may be a very damaging thing. We may think we have a lot of things we think we love, but whether the passion for it is real or not, only time and place will tell.

Here I want to translate a short text from Chinese which is an insightful read:

"如果你看到一幅画像，而认识其中的人，八成回评他像不像。
如果你看到一幅画像，而不认识其中的人，八成回评他美不美。" 

"If you were looking at a portrait painting, and knew the person that was painted, you would judge it based on its similarity. 

If you were looking at a portrait painting, and did not know the person that was painted, you would judge it based on its beauty."

A fault with all of us is that with time, our interests for things fade, and it takes a lot of willpower, passion and inspiration for an interest to last a lifetime. The most obvious case is studying. You may love the course you're majoring in when you just start uni, but when you dive deeper into the subject, you find that it's not actually something you enjoy doing. When you come across such situations, you think too much and doubt yourself, eventually making yourself hate what you do.

Chinese philosophers in the past have widely studied this topic, and they have come up with what is actually a very simple solution that just needs a lot of practice. It comes from the Chinese proverb '难得糊涂' which translates directly to 'it's rare to be confused', or better known English as 'ignorance is a bliss'. If you did not think too much about what this thing you love now can become in the future, if you did not know the author of that book you liked, if you studied without thinking whether it'd be useful in the future, you might appreciate more things in life and just be a little happier. People who are always happy are the people who live for the present - they try to love everything they have now without thinking what could become of them. They focus on that fact that it brings them happiness NOW and they should value it because one day, it could be gone. People say that children are the only ones who do not judge things based on their functions, outcomes and what others think of them.

Here's another translation:

"才几个月的婴儿，就已经回听音乐，哼出不成调的歌。
才学会走路的幼儿，就已经回手舞足蹈，应着节拍起舞。
才知抓笔的孩子，就已经回涂涂抹抹，花些不成形的东西。
人似乎天生就是音乐家，舞蹈家和画家。但是，为什么他们成年之后，大部分都不再像儿时那么放情地歌舞和绘画了呢？
因为他们渐渐学会了害羞，怕自己没有嘹亮的歌喉，曼妙的身段和绘画的细胞。
因为他们愈来愈忙绿，忙的没有时间欣赏音乐，没有余情应节起舞，没有闲暇挥笔作画。
就这样年复一年，他们遗忘天赋的才能，也失去许多的快乐。" 

"A baby who's only a few months old can already listen to music, and hum tuneless melodies. An infant who just learnt to walk can already wave their hands and feet in the air and dance to the music.A child who just learnt to hold a pen can already colour in, drawing shapeless pictures.It's like people were born to be musicians, dancers and artists. But why is it that after they grow up, the majority of them won't sing, dance and draw heartily like in their childhoods?Because they learnt to become shy, afraid that they won't have good voices, graceful bodies and a talent for drawing.Because they became increasingly busy, so busy that they wouldn't have time to enjoy music, spare interests for dancing, nor spare time to draw.Years pass like this, they forget their god given talents, and also lose a lot of happiness."

Sometimes it is best to just take a step back and take time to focus on why you love what you do/have rather than think what you could be having instead of it. If you initially loved something, be proud of it and always look at how you continue to love it. 'You only live once' is an overused, but extremely true motto in life. If you live being ignorant to disappointment, you can lessen your burdens of expectations, and without heavy expectations your life could become less rigid and restricted. In your desperate attempts to better yourself/obtain things more beautiful, you might neglect the beautiful things you already have. There are potentially so much beauty in the world right in front of your eyes, that you might not have time to see. When one pauses to see the beauty around them, every hour of life is an enjoyment.

Sadly many people understand this concept but think it's too idealist and doesn't fit in with their busy lives. Because one thought a song sounded terrible one day they may stop listening to that band altogether, and miss out on all the other good songs they haven't heard. Because one was too busy hating on their workload of having to read a large selection of books for their homework, they forget that in fact these books are written by the best authors ever existed. If we all kept picking out the flaws and kept believing that there are things out there better than them, how will beauty ever transcend?

An interesting topic related to this is when the world class violinist Joshua Bell pretended to be an average busker at a metro station in the US. He played 6 pieces by Bach, on his 4 million Stradivarius violin, and out of 1000+ who walked past, only 7 people stopped by briefly to enjoy the music. He played the same repertoire at a concert the day before and received excellent reviews for it. But when the same beauty appears at a time when people's priorities are not to seek beauty in music, but rather to hurry up with their rigid working lives, the beauty is almost completely ignored. As the report of this incident says: 'If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?'

So it's time to sift out the bad and see the good in everything we love, regardless of their flaws. Everything in the world has flaws, but because they have flaws, they are beautiful. If we can solidify our interest and passions, create more time to seek beauty in our normal lives, maybe we can physically create transcendental, everlasting beauty that are all in fact, made of the things we already possess.