Definition

Why is something beautiful? This question popped into my head as I was riding through Burbank at 6:00 am this morning. The sun was just peaking over the distant mountains, creating a pinkish glow on all the buildings. The moment lasted only a few minutes but it was breathtaking. Everything seemed in a state of genuine beauty. All I could do was smile...

...then I got a phone call. The moment stopped and the beauty was gone, replaced with just another city full of ugly buildings.

I think beauty is solely defined internally. How can it be defined otherwise? I see beauty in certain things that others do not and others see beauty in things that I do not see. The constant is not the attribute of things but that the sense of beauty originates within people. The beauty I see is also not predefined by the thing and a value of beauty. There is also my own state that will "enhance" the beauty I see. Maybe enhance is a bad word since it implies a thing, might be better to say beauty = potential sense of beauty in thing + state of person. No...that's not it.