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Go somewhere dark and distant and unfamiliar, at the top of a hill above a bustling city, and look up. If the sky is clear and the night is calm, a world will open up beyond the comprehension of the human mind and all you will see is an infinite stretch of space, an eternity of stars and planets and moons, sprawled out on a canvas of black. You could trace the constellations and marvel in the vastness of space and, maybe, be overwhelmed by the beauty of it. Or, the sight could instill fear, a feeling of insignificance, rather than beauty. It all depends on the way the world appears to you.

More incomprehensible, maybe, than outer space is the human mind; that which gives us not only our senses but the ability to be selective about what excites our senses, what we find preferable to our eyes, ears, nose, mouth, as well. That, in fact, is exactly what the dictionary defines as “beautiful” – anything that “pleases the senses or mind, as by line, color, form, texture, proportion, etc.” or simply, as the third definition plainly states, “good looks”. But how can beauty be defined by such a standard if the concept of pleasing sensory information is so unique to the individual? A chemical composition in each of our minds, the neurons and electrochemical cells, that make us each unique individuals give us all unique sensations when processing information from the afferent nerves in our central nervous system. More simply, based on the idea that each individual is vastly different in their taste, there can be no concrete definition of beauty, especially not the way there seems to be in our society. Despite how frequently and inanely the word is used today, “beauty” truly does exist in the eye of the beholder, its definition flexible and adaptable and in no way finite.
It’s difficult for anyone, with few exceptions, to describe beauty in words or replicate it in pictures and to successfully illustrate a perfect depiction of what they see to their...