HHHokay.. so i wrote a mushy paper on a cool piece of architecture.
Travis Widner
Taj Mahal
Out of any piece of architecture constructed, my values and concerns are most accurately reflected in the image of the Taj Mahal. This building, to me, idealizes the sole value in life that we as humans need to hold as the most important emotion and aspect of life - love. In a world full of hate, competition, greed, and corruption, one often loses sight of the thing that sets us apart as humans. Animals fight, this is common knowledge, and often they can give the illusion of love if someone is willing to feed them long enough for them to stick around. Realizing this, one would certainly assume that we would love more, since the ability to love is, in fact, exclusive to our race. But rather than focusing on what makes us us, we would rather blow ourselves to hell and back over reasons we aren’t even sure exist.
The man who materialized the Taj Mahal, Shah Jahan, surely spent his fair share of hate, and I acknowledge this. But the true purpose of Taj Mahal was not to reflect its creator; its job was to embody its creator’s ideal. This scenario could most likely be found anywhere in the history of the world. For instance, John Lennon created great works advocating peace, although surely Mr. Lennon had experienced some feeling of spite sometime in his life. In the same way someone listening to Lennon’s great music would do, one should forget about any characteristics of a symbol’s creator that might go against the piece’s ideal. Instead, take the piece as its own creation, spawned from only a state of mind or emotion unique to maybe even just an instant in time such as an evening, or a sunset or morning. Whatever the case, one cannot help but to identify the Taj Mahal as being the most beautiful and love-evoking construction on earth.