Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1 - Preserving Beauty

I have had a best friend since high school named Justine. Justine has some unique philosophies. I don’t have the time to list all of Justine’s unique thoughts and mannerisms, but the one that this story requires is that Justine loves buying physical copies of music. Spotify is not for her, so she buys CDs. The summer after my senior year, Justine and I decided to take a two week vacation, just the two of us, to Florida. We were going to listen to Justine’s brand new copy of the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1 the whole time.

And we did…through the whole 21 hour drive that I did alone, despite Justine promising she would drive some. And through the beach trips where I would be wanting to have fun and Justine would be on her phone watching Netflix. And through the times that I would be convinced to bail on dinner with my Floridian family to instead go and get McDonalds. And through every other moment that irked me the whole trip.

I love Justine with all my heart, but as we approached the end of the trip, I was ready to fight her, which is saying something as I am a strict pacifist. As we started our 21 hour drive home, sure enough, she put in that CD. At this point, just hearing that album would send me over the edge, and it did. The CD went on and I lost it. All of the issues from the week had built up and we were about to have the biggest fight we had ever had.

Before she said anything, though, she took the CD out and very carefully put it away. When I asked what she was doing, she said she did not want to ruin the album by associating it with fighting with her best friend. I was in awe. She valued our friendship to the point that she had purposely changed the environment, so as to not let our fight ruin something she enjoyed. While we still had our fight, I learned something very important that day: we have an active role in preserving beauty in our lives. To this day, I still get slightly frustrated when I listen to that album, but for Justine, it is probably associated with a great trip to Florida with her best friend. She chose to preserve beauty while I chose to ignore it, or trample it. That is a lesson I have carried with me since, and through the exploration of themes in this class, it has become all the more evident that we have an influence on our own experiences of beauty. It is not always up to us to create them, but it is our responsibility to open ourselves up to them and not to ruin them for others.

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