I consider the two questions to be unrelated, though I can see how they have been linked, as so eloquently put by DiscoDan. Which means I must now say what I wanted to say, differently
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To be in the moment means to be free of all worries of the past, present, and future.
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Being free from the distractions of the past and future make it
possible to fully enjoy the pleasures of the present, but it doesn't guarantee it. Suffering in the present also prevents enjoyment, and would make it difficult to appreciate beauty.
But to consider the question in the spirit it was asked; I believe the
reason to be in the moment is to be free of the unnecessary distractions of the past and future. Once free of those distractions we can deal with the distractions of the present and, once they're dealt with, fully enjoy the present moment, and thus our entire life.
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Beauty is a quality we perceive in something else, which invokes feelings of pleasure, meaning, satisfaction, admiration, or other positive emotions.
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So as DiscoDan said, it's arbitrary. It's a quality we perceive, and so as we've discovered, it's difficult (perhaps impossible) to define and agree upon. To fully agree we would first have to agree on what we're seeing, and then agree on what we feel in response.
But it doesn't matter if we don't agree. In fact it's a good thing that we don't. If we did it would mean our perceptions are the same, and that would mean our personalities are the same.
I think that the reason some of us see beauty more clearly than others is because we already experience those positive feelings and are not relying on anything else to invoke them. I say us, but I shouldn't; I certainly don't exist in such a state most of the time. But having had many experiences of varied pleasurable states, and being aware of how I perceived the world while in that state, I feel confident in stating that beauty is entirely subjective and that it's our emotions which 'create' beauty. We see something, pleasurable feelings are invoked, and we judge that thing to be beautiful. Or, we feel happy, we see something, it doesn't change our emotional state, and we judge that thing to be beautiful.