Beauty: Motivation Anytime, Anywhere

Anthony Mueller

Elisha Emerson

ENG 110

April 27th, 2018

Imagine a world where your senses are dull. No interesting tastes or smells. No beautiful sights or empowering music. No beauty. People would be depressed, they would look around and feel so empty. That is because beauty is life’s way of motivating us, inspiring us to go out and do something. It is a source of inspiration that we can draw from anywhere, anytime. The School of Life, an online educational company, explains that art can motivate and inspire us. I have experienced the wonders that beauty can do first-hand. I have done a whole project on how even Cathedrals can evoke powerful emotions (Mueller). This broad view of beauty has allowed me to not only achieve my goals, but also maintain a positive outlook on life. Schiller, a late German poet, proposes that beauty comes from two internal drives, the sense and the form drive. When these drives work in unison we observe beauty. When these drives observe beauty, we can use that beauty as inspiration, motivating us to improve. I do not believe beauty is as simple as Schiller proposes, but I also believe that we don’t need an advanced understanding of beauty in order to enjoy its benefits. No matter our level of understanding, beauty can inspire and motivate us in our daily lives and in turn aid us in combating depression as well as laziness.

My view of beauty has led me to be a motivated individual and led me to appreciate the little things. When asked what I find is beautiful, I often struggle to answer. This is because I try to seek out the beauty in everything, even if at first it is not clear.

For an example, many would say it is easy to find the beauty in the picture on the left (West). Everything from the color to the imagined smell invoke a sense of beauty in most people. However many would argue what is in the right picture isn’t beautiful, but this is where I disagree (Seismic). At first glance it may just be a speaker, but when I start to think how this speaker was crafted, all the tiny wires intertwined, the unimaginably small electrons traveling through these wires, I find it extremely beautiful, maybe not in the traditional sense, but in the sense that it is amazing to see it all come together. The more I look for this beauty, the more hope I have. In the example of the flowers, seeing the image gives me a sense of well being. It makes me happy to know that these colorful contraptions exist in our world. Another example is the sound of birds chirping (Raquel). This beautiful sound invokes a feeling of hope for the future, a hope the winter will soon be over and summer will move in. The point of both these examples is that beauty can trigger these emotions that in turn help me make it through even the roughest of days.

Perhaps the strongest and most important feeling beauty can generate is motivation. This motivation can be sourced from all sorts of beauty. Going back to the speaker, I see how all these pieces come together to form an amazing device and it motivates me to be a part of something bigger. Another classic example is music. Sometimes I will hear beautifully composed song and it will trigger certain emotions that will in turn motivate me (Garage). Overall it’s hard to describe my connection between beauty and motivation because I personally lack the science to explain it. However, my experiences have definitely shown me that there is a connection there.

Armstrong, offers one solution for my connection between beauty and motivation by describing Schiller’s belief on what beauty is. In Armstrong’s essay he frames out and describes Schiller’s search for understanding beauty. Schiller says that humans have two drives, the ‘sense’ and ‘form’ drive, the former being a drive that appeals to short term gratification and the later being a drive that craves coherence and understanding. He goes on to say “For Schiller, true beauty is whatever speaks powerfully to both sides of our nature at the same time”(Armstrong). Schiller believes that it is only when these drives work together that we achieve beauty. While I think that Schiller has reasonable thinking, I can’t help but disagree for two reasons. First, this explanation seems to simple. With the current science of today, there must be a more in-depth explanation. Second I believe that even if something doesn’t give us short-term gratification, or offer coherence , we can still find it beautiful. Take abstract art for an example

I wouldn’t say this is necessarily gratifying, in fact many might find it frustrating. A lack of organization, incoherent grouping of colors, and an unfinished look makes it difficult to find any sort of gratification.. Yet many people still find it beautiful. This is a major flaw in Schiller’s beliefs. Therefore I am still stuck without a connection to why a feel motivated when I see beauty, but I don’t believe it matters. We don’t need the understanding of beauty that Armstrong is searching for. It may be nice to know how it works, but for know we can still access the feelings of beauty without the understand. I’ve been doing it for years now and it hasn’t made a difference. For an example, many people are motivated to hike for the gorgeous view at the summit.

We don’t necessarily understand what exactly is happening in our brain during this view, but that doesn’t stop it from motivating us to climb up this mountain time and time again (Mountain). That’s why we don’t need the understanding Schiller is seeking. We just need an open mind to beauty and its impact.

Depression and lack of motivation affect a large population of our country and this may be linked to a more narrow view of beauty in society. It is hard to pinpoint an exact view for beauty in society because people have vastly different views on what beauty is. However many people today have a very focused view of beauty. This focused view is great when it comes to describing what beauty is, but I feel like it often holds people back. If people learned to find beauty in more of the objects around them, they’d allows have a source of happiness or motivation to pull from. For example, Olivia, a classmate, wrote about how art in Children’s Hospitals can help them through hard times. Even when stuck with terminal illness, these children can find joy in life through the beauty in art, colorful rooms, and beautiful architectural designs. The School of Life explains how people can draw from beauty, art in particular, “one thing art can do is reassure us of the normality of pain it can be sad with and for us some of the world’s greatest works of art have been loved for their capacity to make the pain that’s inside all of us publicly visible and available (01:40). This is further explains how beauty can help people through challenging times. Perhaps if society could learn to also appreciate the beauty in everything, we could fix some of the universal problems we face.

Society needs motivation and hope now more than ever. How do we achieve this hope? Through the power of beauty and an open mind towards what we consider beautiful. This can be a picture of flowers, reminding us of the amazing world we live in. Or perhaps, it is a picture of war, motivating us to bring forth peace. Either way, beauty can and will impact us. We may not be able to explain how it works, but it doesn’t matter. Beauty is capable of evoking feeling that is desperately needed in today’s society. If we can change society’s views on beauty then from personal experience i can say that at least some positive change is bound to follow. Until we can learn to find beauty in the whole world around us, we could be missing out on its potential.

Works Cited

Armstrong, John. “La Bella Vita”. Aeon, 14 February 2014,

https://aeon.co/essays/can-beauty-help-us-to-become-better-people. 24 April 2018.

Challenge, Garage. Short motivation video. Youtube, 9 May 2015,

https://youtu.be/WRg9r_DlQms. 24 April 2018.

Claurodri. Pollock. Digital Image. Abstract Art for Kids. WordPress, 7 February 2013.

https://squeeeze.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/jacksonpollock2.jpg. 24 April 2018.

Mountain Sunset, White Mountains. Personal photograph by author. 2017.

Mueller, Anthony. “Let’s Talk About Art” Anthony’s Space, WordPress,

https://amueller1.uneportfolio.org/eng-110/title/. Accessed 24 April 2018.

Olivia, Gagne. “My Personal Experience With Art”. Livi’s Site, WordPress,

http://ogagne.uneportfolio.org/my-personal-experience-with-art/. Accessed 24 April