Discover beauty with beautiful eyes.

The world does not lack beauty, but the eyes that find it.

rodin

A pile of roots that could have been made into immortal works of art were abandoned by carpenters as "useless things". When carpenters went up the mountain, they chose "usable" materials, either as pillars or as buildings, or as rafters if they were not used well. Can this pile of grotesque roots do this? Can't do it. No wonder the carpenter left them a "useless" sigh.

As a carpenter, his criterion for measuring the usefulness of wood is "practicality". In fact, as long as we broaden our horizons a little, we can find that there are not a few people who look at things with "practical" eyes like carpenters. Looking for an object first depends on whether his (her) family is rich, judging a student by his (her) exam results, and seeing whether he (she) makes friends with value ... The market economy system not only promotes economic development, but also makes people form a pragmatic concept of quick success and instant benefit.

We are materialists. We admit that in order to survive, we must first solve the problem of food, clothing, housing and transportation. There is nothing wrong with paying attention to practicality and pursuing utility. But our eyes can't just focus on "practicality" and "utility". As the spirit of all things, man should have a higher level of pursuit besides material desires. In addition to the "practical" vision, there must be an aesthetic vision.

Looking at the world from an aesthetic perspective, we can find many beautiful things and cultivate many talented people. Root carving artists discovered the beauty of roots with aesthetic eyes and carved them into very valuable works of art; Zhong Ziqi listened to the beauty in the music played by Yu Boya with aesthetic ears, and they became bosom friends of "high mountains and flowing water"; Cai Yuanpei discovered the beauty of Shen Congwen's literary talent with aesthetic eyes, making Shen Congwen a famous professor at Peking University.

Piles of roots have become priceless works of art in the hands of root carving artists, an ordinary horse has become a swift horse in Bole's eyes, and a stone has become a meteorite in the eyes of astronomers, all because the discoverer used an "aesthetic" vision instead of a secular "practical" vision.

Give me, give me a pair of aesthetic "eyes"! For the grotesque roots not to be abandoned, for the swift horse not to be "killed by slaves", and for the beauty of this world not to be buried.