The Price of Love and Beauty

"To be a conscious person in this world, to be aware of all the suffering and the beauty, means to have your heart broken over and over again."  Sharon Salzberg

"There's thorns on the cactus tree
There's thorns on the rose.
There's thorns in the heart of me
That nobody knows."   Anastasia's Eyes, Dan Fogelberg

When I first read Salzberg's words, I thought there was a mistake. How can "suffering" and "beauty" be in the same sentence? I thought beauty was the antidote for suffering.  But I quickly realized that suffering can lead to beauty and beauty can lead to suffering.  They are both cut from the same bolt of cloth. The sentence was true.

In April of 1997, the Hale-Bopp comet was closest to the earth.  As my brother and I approached the south rim of the Grand Canyon that beautiful afternoon.  I was his passenger and he was driving.  It would be my second visit to the canyon and his first. He was talking to me and glancing at me to his right so he didn't  see that we had arrived at the canyon.  I told him to pull over.  He asked me why and I said, "Just pull over."  When we were safely on the side of the road, I interrupted him and said, "Look!", pointing over his shoulder to his left.  His eyes immediately flooded with tears as they  began to roll down his face.  "Beauty". "Suffering".  That night it was my turn to suffer.  After setting up our camp and finding something to eat, we walked to the edge of the Grand Canyon at nearly midnight.  Although it was dark, the comet cast an ambient light like a full moon against the canyon walls. The comet was hanging just over our heads.  If I had had a step ladder, I could have climbed up and touched it.   But even without a ladder,I was close enough. We often think of a comet as something that's moving at great speed, and of course it  was.  But from  my vantage point that night, it was completely stationary. Completely still.  And I had no way to comprehend what I was seeing. Since we were alone on the brow, besides  breaking out in tears, I broke out in song. I sang He Ne Ma Tov in the Hebrew Rabbi Sherwin had taught me. It is translated, "How good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity." Psalm 133:1

Notice that Salzberg didn't say, "To be a conscious person in the world is to be aware of all the suffering and beauty."  There is no "is"; there is only a comma.  You can be conscious and have no awareness of suffering or beauty. A narcissist, while conscious,  knows no suffering and a barbarian has no appreciation for beauty.  "To be aware of suffering and beauty is to have your heart broken again and again" needs little explanation. As we well know, the price for love is pain.

My brother and I would return to the Grand Canyon seventeen years later.  This time we explored the north rim. There are significantly less tourists there as it is more trouble to get to and few places to stay. It offers significantly more solitude.  We enjoyed much more solitude than we predicted when our four-wheeler broke down and we were stranded there over three hours while waiting for help.  You can do much worse than to be stranded at  the north rim of the Grand Canyon for three hours.  The views were different from those of the south, but the experience was the same.  It was all too beautiful than I could comprehend.  It was like emotional brain freeze.  The reason that slurpie hurts so badly is that the soft palette is overwhelmed and sends a powerful signal to the brain to stop drinking so fast. In the case of those canyon views, the best thing to do was to turn our heads.


Two days later my brother and I drove into Zion Canyon, Utah, In its case, you don't look down to appreciate the view, you look up.  You're in the base of the canyon to begin with. If I thought the Grand Canyon was the greatest of all, I was in for a surprise. The night we found ourselves under a full moon in the middle of the night in the center of that canyon, was one of the most incredible and surreal experience of my life. There's little I would trade for that experience.

Why would nature be so cruel as to put sharp, prickly thorns on  a rose?  But as the poets have told us, it's actually a rose on  a thorn. The price of love may be pain, but it's worth it.