What is Beauty?

What is beauty? Is it a perfect profile or a perfect smile?
Is it hope? Is it the energy of positive expectations?
Is beauty simply the opposite of ugly? Is beauty the absence of ugly?
Is ugly a lack of hope? Is it a surrendered soul; a bitter heart?
Every day around me, I see beauty and I see ugly.
Mostly, I see beauty in young people.
I see ugly in the old. I see an empty look of a life that has been spent; like a salmon that has laid its eggs and is now waiting to die.
Is that what we are? Are we slaves of instinct? Are we not better than a salmon?
What the h*ll is your life about? Why did you, or God, or whomever, send you here to exist in this realm of “reality” in the first place?
Is your life a random irrelevant event? Do you have a job to do? If so, what is it?
Are you here to swim upstream and spend your life on some act of mindless instinct? If that was your purpose, don’t you think you would have come to earth as a fish?
Why are you here? Why do you have a mind to comprehend, and a heart to love and be awed?
You are a human. You have a sophisticated, beautiful, human purpose for being. What is it?
I wish you luck in your quest.

Author's Bio: 

Hugh DeBurgh, The Passionate Warrior, has dedicated his life to the achievement of the ultimate family lifestyle. You can find him writing about Creative Family Lifestyle Design over at his blog, The Way of the Passionate Warrior. Currently he is on the second leg of a worldwide travel adventure with his wife and four young children. His blog is at http://thepassionatewarrior.com .