Merriam-Webster dictionary defines transcendence as: exceeding usual limits, extending or lying beyond the limits of ordinary experience; being beyond the limits of all possible experience and knowledge; being beyond comprehension, the universe or material existence; universally applicable or significant.

Transcendent things are beyond what is so earthbound and usual, above the least common denominator. It is the shiny thing in the mud and the dawn that rises upon it. It is a deep search of all beings not content with just surviving, but wanting to exist and experience on levels higher than mindless following a playbook of flesh. Human is a most prominent pinnacle of a consciousness searching for meaning and capable of seeing the aforementioned dawn, even if the dawn cannot be captured, measured, owned, or used and disperses moments later. Philosophy has been trying to explain this higher realm of experience and came up with the notion of transcendentals – truth, beauty and goodness. In our inadequacies, absolute goodness and truth are somehow always out of reach but we’ve been endowed with a strange capability to sense beauty and find it in even the most sullied places and states. This beauty is not necessarily a happy, light delightful occurrence which fills us with glee, joy and bliss as we’re in its presence. Beauty could also be a deep melancholic feeling, poetic justice in a sequence of events not in themselves beautiful, finding a glimpse of order in chaos, staring at wreckage looking at the caved in ceiling where the light is seeping in and cutting the dust or a flower pushing its way out from the rubble.

Taste is a destiny of who we’ll become through the course of our lifetime because there are ugly and beautiful things coexisting everywhere. The quality and intricacy of our internal emotional life will be dependent on what we choose to focus on. No matter what level of taste you came hardwired with, you can learn, expand and cultivate it by deciding to expose yourself to beautiful things and protect your mind from the ugliness (that could have been avoided; some can’t).  You have beautiful works of art at your disposal in galleries and museums of artists living and long gone, literature so captivating and rhythmic that makes your whole being sing, deep intricate melancholic streams of thought in Russian novels, masters of craft in oratory, singers who give you goosebumps, edifices of melodies who speak of feelings you’re not sure could ever be put to words, wonderful documentaries, research, optimistic and creative science breakthroughs to follow as we collectively push new boundaries… You don’t need to settle with the news, the enchantment of “at the edge of your seat” TV series, empty talk shows about nothing, soap operas amplifying the worst of humanness as a televised sideshow, distorting and foul gossip of yellow press, meaningless trinkets that grab your attention making you watch or read things you don’t even want to watch or read and feel worse, emptier and more anxious after.  Sensationalism, the culture of delivering gore, disgust and outrage in order to interest the desensitized public eye, highlights of confrontations with no resolution, attention and shock economy, fear sweepstakes… It’s like a fluffer standing in front of a turn of the century freak show inviting you to go in, talking nonsense to turn your marginal interest to the point you’re going to pay for the entrance and be amazed, shocked, horrified…

Don’t be so naive that you become unaware of the bad and ugly in the world, but make a choice to see the good as well and focus on the beauty. Don’t fill your private time with garbage because garbage in = garbage out (the principle known as GIGO). Beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder, there is an objective beauty, whatever it is. You feel it as order, as completion, as something extraordinary emerging, as rest, peace or contentment, as awe… Be conscious in acknowledging beautiful things wherever you find them and develop your taste. Assault of the senses is yours to refuse. There is beauty all around. Make it a daily habit to find it.