Wide sea of beauty

I've come to the place where I see I couldn't have lived any other way.

It's like reading along somewhere in Plato and coming to the place where he's talking about the "wide sea of beauty" being available to those who've progressed from seeing the surface of beauty to seeing beauty's substance, seeing divine beauty free from all individual phenomena and relationships. This is the progress that becomes the "basic standard principle" Plato talks about upon which one lives his life (or builds a house, writes a book, raises a child etc.)

I don't know that I'm quite there yet, but I know I like seeing what I don't know what I'm seeing and making something out of it as best I can, and that I've lived this way most of my life to the point where I see I couldn't have lived any other way.

At this point the wide sea of beauty is not only what I want to see, the wide side of beauty is what I am seeing. Whether this is progress is not the point; that it is the basic structural principle of my life is.

You don't have to believe in god, you can but you don't have to.

Seeing the tree I don't know the name of be beautiful enough to drop its leaves on the sidewalk in downtown Portland is beautiful enough.