If you’ve been following my articles, you’ll know that over the past year, I’ve spent a lot of time working on myself. My life changed a lot in the last 5 years, and today felt like the final chapter of that journey.
I came to a simple realization:
Beauty is not just an objective physical property, but rather an embodied, internal experience.
For a long time, I thought beauty was mostly something we could see. A beautiful face. A beautiful house. A beautiful car.
Today I realized that beauty goes far beyond what is visible.
Beauty can be the way someone looks at you with genuine kindness. It can be the first notes of a song that give you goosebumps. It can be the smell of the sea, the taste of a meal shared with friends, or the feeling of sunlight on your skin after a long winter.
Some of the most beautiful things in life are completely invisible.
The experience that stayed with me most was remembering the Eiffel Tower.
Most of us admire it from the outside. We take the classic photo, check it off the list, and move on.
But what I remember isn’t the tower itself.
I remember being inside it.
Walking through the enormous iron structure, surrounded by its geometry and engineering, feeling myself rise above Paris. As the city slowly unfolded beneath me, I had the strange feeling that I was standing on top of the world. In that moment, I wasn’t looking at the Eiffel Tower.
I was experiencing it, and that’s where the beauty was.
It made me realize that the greatest experiences are often impossible to capture in a photograph. A picture can remind you of a moment, but it can never recreate the feeling.
Driving a sports car taught me the same lesson. At first, I thought what I loved was the car itself. But that’s only a small part of it. It’s the sound of the engine, the smell of the interior, the feeling of acceleration, the music playing in the background, the road unfolding in front of you, even dressing for the occasion. None of those things alone is extraordinary. Together, they create an experience. And that’s where the beauty lives.
The same applies to trust, which I’ve been struggling with. Many people around have disappointed me, cheated on me, and taken advantage of me, especially since I became what we call “successful”
We don’t build trust with logic alone. We build it with our senses, and I need to learn this.
A person’s eyes. Their smile. Their voice. The way they listen. The feeling of calm when you’re with them. Before our mind has finished analyzing, our senses have already begun to understand.
Perhaps beauty and trust are more connected than I ever imagined.
Both begin with paying attention. Both require presence.
And both remind us that the most valuable things in life often have no price, no audience, and no need to be photographed.
In summary, this is the biggest insight I’ve learned in the last year:
Don’t spend your life collecting beautiful things. Spend it collecting beautiful experiences.
— Matt Delac
P.S. Thank you to everyone who has been by my side throughout this journey. You know who you are, and I’ll always be grateful.
Beautifully written, Matt. I think you captured something very true: beauty is not something we simply observe, but something we feel and experience. The moments that stay with us are rarely just about the object itself, but about the emotions, connections, and sensations attached to them.
I also find your connection between beauty and trust very interesting. Both require us to be present and open enough to truly experience what is in front of us. Thank you for sharing such a thoughtful reflection.