"For me, beauty is always retreating from one’s grasp: the only thing I consider important is what existed once, or ought to have existed."-Yukio Mishima

What do you think? What could be considered more valuable, how beautiful something (anything at all) once was, or how the ideal design/beauty of whatever that something is, should've been? Or, is it more important what that something eventually becomes?

I'll just say this. Throughout the course of a thing's existence, each stage of it's duration is like a snapshot. Looking at in retrospect, could it not be said that when that thing was at it's most beautiful state (beauty here can signify many things), that this snapshot of it's maximum beauty is equal in value at least to other snapshots of it's existence (say, a snapshot of when it began to deteriorate)? What's to say that how that thing ended it's existence is to define the overall memory of that thing?

In the end, maybe it boils down to how you want to remember that thing's existence.

I am an old nihilist. Beauty is what you make it. Find something or someone and decide that is beautiful. If it is in the eye of the beholder, then you can control an aspect of it.