Sacrificing for Beauty

I was out shopping today with my roommate Jonathan, and we were talking, as people do while grocery shopping. While walking into Aldi, the topic of beauty came up. And we started to think about the stupid things we as humans do for beautiful things. A few ideas popped into my head about the things that are beautiful that we sacrifice for.

1. The opposite sex. I only speak as a man, but I know guys do really ridiculous things and sacrifice time, money, and any other number of resources just to meet, please, or get to know a girl.

2. Mountains/views. Again, I speak from only my experience, but I know we spend hours of miserable climbing and walking (not all of it is miserable) to be able to summit a peak and attain a beautiful biew. There's even potential for beauty along the hike, but I promise you there are some pretty boring sections as well.

3. Sunrises. We get our sorry butts up and out of bed for the incredible beauty of the sun peeking over the edge of the earth. The colors that appear at this time are so unique and the draw us to them.

4. Friendships. This might seem out there, but I think you could call a friendship a beautiful thing, and for sure we sacrifice a lot of time to cultivate and keep these relationships healthy. Without that time, a relationship can get ugly.

I think there are other things for sure, and clearly we enjoy them. So of course you could say, 'duh' why wouldn't we sacrifice for it. But in themselves, these things don't benefit us directly. So why do we do it? It seems like we consider some sort of benefit of giving up more essential life needs, for these things.

Photo Credit: Rob Bergman