Why Do We Cry at Sunsets?

There are a few things that make us all feel something. Even the most cold-hearted of us find some joy in the simple views of nature. 

I know it’s cliche and trite, but there’s some truth in every such thing - otherwise they wouldn’t become overplayed. It’s worth discussing further to a broader culture even if I am not the most learned man nor the most eloquent speaker.

I was on the phone with my sister and the topic of art came up. More specifically, how I viewed and experienced art as well as its purpose. The value of art cannot be understated, just look at how even in our nihilistic and evermore materialistic society the prevalence of live concerts, freelance photographers, and a longing for artistic expression prevails. We crave the beautiful, it is inherent to our humanity. 

Nature has ever been a primary fascination with both the artist and the rest of us talentless folk. We are arrested by the power of a majestic mountain, babbling brook, or spectacular sunset. The interplay of colors, textures, scale, they all work together harmoniously and do something to us. They communicate to us a sense of beauty greater than ourselves. We forget about the worries of our lives and are entranced by the rhythmic undulations of the sea. We spend hours hiking up sometimes arduous paths simply to have a better vantage to be in awe at our beautiful planet. We love beauty, we need it. 

But why? Why do sunsets and mountains and the endless seas have such a loving stranglehold on us?

Artists intrinsically impart themselves onto their art. To sidestep the important discussion of whether art can be separated from the artist, it is always true that art is imbued with some essence of the artist. Their experiences, their views of the world, their sense of purpose for their own art. The same is true with the beauty found in the physical world. All the beauty of creation points towards an even greater beauty of its Creator. Just as the radiance of the sun is reflected, refracted, and scattered through our atmosphere to display the beautiful array of blues, reds, oranges, purples, and (sometimes) greens - so too is the radiance and beauty of God reflected in the awe-inspiring beauty we experience in the physical world. Creation cries out to us saying “look higher, I am not the end.” The beauty we experience in life is an imperfect reflection bouncing off a wall of the truly perfect and fundamental beauty of our Creator.

God Himself is beauty. Therefore He imbues His creation with a calling card of lesser beauty. This is true of us humans too. We have long heard the words of St. Augustine of Hippo that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. What does this mean? It means this: that the intense and powerful emotions we experience at sunsets are signs that we have so much more to look forward to when we finally do rest in the fullness of beauty in God. There is an even greater beauty that can draw forth an even greater response from the deepest wells of our being.

Those of us who don’t explicitly state an intellectual or academic assent to belief in God still believe in beauty implicitly by their inhabited bodies and lives. Whatever then would be the explanation of such communal experiences of artistic expression of concerts, raves, and multi-day festivals? Burning Man, ACL, and Ubbi Dubbi aren’t typified by their fire-and-brimstone Gospel readings and praying of the rosary. Yet they still reveal this inherent human desire for beauty - and the sharing of it. 

We are made in the image and likeness of God. This entails an untold number of things, but for our purposes this means we have a rational will and longing heart to know and come to know God and His love. God Himself is a community of Lover, Beloved, and Shared Love Between (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). He has imprinted onto the very fabric of our desires for community and sharing of love and sharing of beauty. We suppress this desire at our own peril. The agnostic, atheist, and otherwise non-Christian among us still desire this community just the same as professed believers. It is human nature. These communal expressions of artistic truth are pseudo-religious because it brings together a large swath of people to one place for one purpose, and to do so in peace and harmony with each other. The lesser representation of love, beauty, and community of supposedly secular concerts points towards the higher representation of such things in the communion of saints, which in turn points towards not another representation but to the thing itself in the beauty and love and community of God.

So why do we cry at sunsets? 

Because it reminds us that we long for the perfect beauty of God.