The Object of Life
June 2026
Animus in excellentia invenitur
What is beauty?
Is a person beautiful? What makes one more beautiful than another? Are they beautiful for having a nice face or body, their exterior? Or are they beautiful for their character and mind, their interior? Two things which seemingly are different that we refer to as having beauty. Is a poem beautiful? Yet another usage. Is childbirth and rearing beautiful? Yet another usage.
If all of these things may be beautiful, despite being entirely different things, then beauty must have an underlying meaning which can apply to all.
What is beauty?
Is it in the eye of the beholder? Is it entirely subjective?
Certainly, you possess taste. One may prefer a brunette, and one may prefer a blonde. One may prefer Picasso, and one may prefer Bouguereau. Certainly, still, a trend is formed beyond a mere taste. The woman with immaculate skin will always be hailed as more beautiful than the leper, despite anyone’s ability to find, or not find, beauty in the leper. A Greek statue will always be hailed as more beautiful than a rudimentary tribal idol, despite any beauty that may be found in the latter. The writings of Virgil and Emily Dickinson will always be hailed as more beautiful than the first attempt at poetry of a five-year-old. And you, dear reader, despite possibly wanting to reverse any of these, still do not defeat the point.
Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, only taste – a taste which can only be asserted after an object has reached some level of beauty. Beauty is not merely what pleases. Childbirth is not pleasant for the mother or those assisting or those idling waiting, yet one may still call it beautiful. Beauty is then achievement, fulfillment, perfection, excellence: a thing being fully what it is.
Yet, we cannot encapsulate beauty to the end of an object. A beautiful physique is as beautiful for its aesthetics, the end product and final achievement, just as much as it is also beautiful for (1) its ability to cause awe and inspiration and (2) the struggle, the “journey” and production, undertaken to achieve it. So, the beauty of a physique is not the physique, in itself, but what undergirds it, i.e.: the human person. The beauty is not the fulfillment, in itself, but the action fulfilling and becoming.
A woman is not beautiful for possessing a certain nose or eyes, but that she possesses the qualities of being a woman. She is distinctly woman, distinctly as a matter of aesthetics, character, or otherwise. Further, foregoing first what one may think of transgenderism, a man who transitions unconvincingly is always thought of as uglier and more off-putting than one who is convincingly a woman, because some quality of “woman-ness” is approached, which is the goal. Beauty is not, in either of these cases, the aesthetic itself, though it may seem so at a glance, but the approaching of a quality, the fulfilling of what a thing is.
This, then, negates the latter case of the transgender man. A man may mimic a woman’s aesthetics, mimic the cultural mores of womanhood, yet the underlying assertion of what it is to “transition”, the “trans”, the “change”, is defeating the fulfillment. Fulfillment, in this context, cannot be a mere achievement of a goal. I may use a pen as an arrow, and it will function properly as an arrow for its shape, yet it can never perfect its newfound “arrow-ness”. An object cannot perfect the ends of an object it fundamentally is not, unless becoming the new object, at which point it ceases its former existence. The pen can never truly be an arrow, despite functioning as one, unless I entirely mold the pen anew, stripping any former qualities – at which point it would be illogical to refer to it as a pen entirely. This function of transitioning, then, is not the perfection of the pen, but the arrow. I am attempting not to perfect the pen, because perfecting the pen would be to create an optimal writing tool. I am perfecting the arrow. Yet, what originated as a pen could never be a perfected arrow, even having undergone change. It is an attempt to create the perfect arrow, which can only be failed.
What is being perfected? The object. What is being fulfilled in its perfection? The object’s qualities. What is fulfilling? The action of perfecting.
At every waking moment of your life, you are simultaneously who you are at that moment, yet also actively becoming who you will be at a future moment. Every decision to act, every thought entertained, every word uttered, is an active reinforcement of your becoming. The beautiful physique is achieved in the series of conscious decisions to perfect the physique. The beautiful mind is achieved in the series of conscious decisions to ward off ugly thoughts. Equally active as the conscious decision to perfect is the conscious decision to not. Every day that one actively decides to exercise one’s body, another actively decides not to.
To have awe for the truly perfected, whatever it may be, and to not willfully choose that for oneself is not passivity – it is the active choice to rest idly in one’s own ugliness, may that be their ugly body, mind, etc. One cannot become anything in an instant. It is only by repeated willful decisions to act or not.
And, for this, I have always found my own understanding of life to be fundamentally Greek. Life is undertaken by action. Yes, in that life is only lived by a series of actions, but also that life is perfected only by dynamitic will – a life well lived is one which exerts an energetic potency. If one sat idly for eternity, one would die. Action must be taken at some level. Goals are moved toward, high or low. Yet, to only live to eat, to only live to continue existence, is only ever the basest form of achievement. Still, to only ever eat, one would not be perfecting one’s body, which can only be done in moving, being that is the function of the body.
A life well lived is found in excellence, the movement toward a perfecting of what one is: a human.
The object of life could not be anything else. Is life about fun and pleasure? Then, any form of fun is equally perfecting one’s life. Someone who takes joy in reading is fulfilled as much as one who enjoys murdering, and both, in this case, are living a life well lived! There is no externality. There is only the subject as the center of their own universe. There is no movement. The subject becomes an ouroboros. To live for your own subjective experience is to be forever idle, even as much as one may move between the pleasures of life.
Life cannot be truly lived without having conquered the self. The beautiful is only created through the force of will. The beautiful physique is crafted by discipline. Even one graced by genetics to be beautiful may be ugly within. One can never be molded unless one can willfully place oneself into life’s furnace.
Perfection, by its nature, is essentially unachievable. Yet, we recognize things in life as perfect, as beautiful, regardless, even in their imperfections. If the object of life is perfection, it is not the being perfect which justifies life, but the function of fulfilling. Life is action. Living is action. Life, therefore, is not perfected, but lived perfectly. The beauty of life is found in striving toward fulfilling one’s own humanity and all that it entails. I cannot be anything but human, and to not struggle toward the perfection of my own soul, mind, character, and body, everything that makes me human, is a disservice to my own humanity. A beautiful life is a life well lived.