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So the philosopher Joseph Campbell used to
say that when we are transfixed by beauty,

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we are beheld in a kind of aesthetic arrest, right.

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We are so transfixed that we stop breathing,
we well up inside.

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We experience what Camus says,
as life lived to the point of tears, right.

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And why do we love these experiences so much?

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Because they arrest time.
They freeze time.

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They force us to marvel.

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They allow us to become contemplative beings.

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To enter those head spaces outside of
normal Euclidian space and time,

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and provide a kind of respite of the
human condition, right.

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We temporarily step off that people mover
that's carrying everyone else towards death

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and we become gods outside of time,
reveling in a kind of ecstatic illumination!

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Staring into the sun and being moved by
its magnificent opulence, you know!

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The universe singing in rapture and us
just like, drowning in it.

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It's like the last scene in the movie
"The Fountain" when he becomes, like,

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the bubble in that explodes in space, you know.

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There's a kind of mythic, ah,
death and rebirth

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and this weird resurrection
happening, you know.

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It's, it's ah,

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we smash our sense of separateness
in these moments, and um,

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yeah it's kind of wonderful.

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And I just think that's why we do it.

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It's therapy.

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Awe is therapy.

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Inspiration is therapy.