This has always been fascinating. I first realized how amazing it is when I was very little, watching the construction of a bridge or a part of a highway or something similar. I would see it every time I was on that highway, which was often. Over time, what was originally a bunch of pillars and iron bars and randomly placed cranes and irate workers became something that had a definite form and shape to it, and was not only aesthetically appealing but also useful - a far cry from its skeletal beginnings.
The three instances I find this to be most apparently amazing in are:
Art,
Language,
And music.
Art by itself is lines and shapes. Every piece of art begins with a single stroke, and then another, and then another, and then you add some color, you move onto another set of lines and strokes and shapes, and before you know it you have something that doesn't look anything like a bunch of lines and shapes, but like something with substance, a real piece of art. Look at this, for example:
It's quite nice to look at. Yet it began with lines and shapes. In fact, it still is lines and shapes and splashes of color. But we don't see that - the finished product is something entirely beyond its individual parts, the sum of those parts creating something absolutely impossible to see when those parts are perceived on their own.
Words are the same way. I've spent a good amount of my life studying Japanese - 日本語. The reason it interests me is that it's a logographic language - to most Americans it looks like a bunch of random shapes. Yet, if you can decipher and interpret those shapes and symbols, they cease to become shapes and they become a means of communication and expression. Some people can't read the Arabic alphabet that we use in western culture. Since we learn how to read at such an early age, it becomes something that's totally second nature to us, like breathing. Yet, looking at a language you once could not understand and then being able to read it really opens your eyes as to how beautifully complex words and letters and written language are. Learning Japanese, learning an entire system of writing, you realize how you have to take it step by step, and it at first seems impossible. し and シ are different ways of expressing the syllable "shi", which blows the mind of the ordinary English speaker. "They're just pictures," you think. But no, they're so much more than that - you just can't see their purpose or worth because you're used to seeing the complete picture of written language, its individual pieces lost long ago, when you first learned to read. Written language is truly an amazing thing, its depth and complexity and intrinsic worth and beauty often unappreciated. It's almost like magic, watching seemingly random symbols gain meaning when placed together in a certain way.
Then there's music. Music is a bunch of sounds. Blow on a trumpet without any experience with playing a trumpet before, or pluck the string on a guitar, and you have the beginnings of music. A meaningless noise, hardly anything worth mentioning. Yet you put all the noises that individual instruments make, change the intonation of the sound at specific times, and piece them together, and - voila - you suddenly have an orchestra, a song, a performance. Music is especially interesting in that you can add people's voices to it, something meant for communication, and turn them into something musical. Poetry suddenly has a voice and a means of expression beyond simple words. And, going even further, and coming off of discussing the beauty of written language, it's even more amazing how music has its own language.
That's Mozart. That looks like total and complete gibberish to anyone who can't read sheet music. It's amazing how that represents sounds, and how the sheet music translates to audible music when performed. In a way, music is another form of language and communication, sometimes of an even higher form than spoken language, and the ability to write and read it only cements this fact.
This could go on all day. Everything has pieces to it that aren't even a shadow of the completed product. There's a universal meaning to this, too. The lives we live are a lot like these individual pieces, where we can't see their greater purpose when viewed on their own. We're part of a society, a world, and a universe, something much bigger and more beautiful and more grand than we can possibly comprehend or imagine.
In my perfect view of an afterlife, we get to see the grand plan, the finished product, the big picture, the final culmination of the sum of each of our lives. I say this because I'm sure it's impossible to see with the limited perspective that we have. I'm sure it's a hell of a product, too. The grand scheme of creation. What could be more amazing than that?
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