Sorry for my bad english !

St. Sebastian made me meet beauty. He gave me a grasp of true, absolute,
selfless beauty. There is nothing in the whole world I find more beautiful than
Sebastian’s story – maybe some other martyrs can compete, but I discovered them
later so they don’t held such an important place. You know, I had no idea such
greatness existed when I was put in front of Guido Reni's painting at 16, and
it struck me. For real, maybe the same way some of you get visions - I might be
exaggerating it but that was an immensely strong feeling. An overwhelming,
otherworldly, unspeakable, terrible feeling of beauty that aches to the core.
He was portraying a sense of absolute that I can't find any accurate wording
for and that has something to do with greatness, or transcendence. It struck me, as someone who was never exposed to that kind of art (I was born and raised an atheist, with parents unconcerned with life and death
philosophy or poetry): beauty had a new meaning. Beauty, real beauty, was a
thing and I was about to strive for it for the rest of my life. I owe it to
Sebastian - I visited his relics in Rome, and now that I'm a published author
in my country, I always think about him when I need to find inspiration.
Then I’ve been learning a lot on the faith. I've been a catholic art,
architecture, chants and history enthusiast for a big part of my late teen
years. There is something immensely deep about it that resonates with men's
deepest longings. That's another debate, but I that societies full of faith
were held together way more than narcissistic, egoistic ones as the ones we
know today. Rome's church was a major part of humanity development and that's
not to be questioned - I hate those atheists pretending we would be 100 years
ahead without it or whatever else that's profoundly dismissive. Although my
profound love for the experience of greatness people are expressing through church,
I’m very much an atheist, and still am. See the universe, the darkness of it, its immensity - who cares what little
ants like we are do, we ourselves can't communicate much with bacteria, right.
But knowing it's all vain yet striving for life anyways had a sense of tragedy
that was profoundly beautiful to me. Sending messages across the universe for
other inhabitants to find, building cathedrals, creating artificial hearts for
people to not die, all of this, be it religion or science, feels kind of the
same to me: the pure, man-made result of a natural fear of death, biggest
horror of men's life, and a way to cope, to seek this eternity and perfection
and longing for beauty we strive for, product of our evolved, extremely
developed brains, capable of conceiving the "self" and refusing to
let it go. “Agnostic” would maybe be a better word to define myself since I also
admit I might be wrong, but I definitely doubt we are much more than bacterias
on a rock. But oh it’s beautiful to be the bacterias we are, and the tragedy of it all is stunning as
well.