​There are so many beautiful things that its impossible to say what the top ten things would be. Everyone has a slightly different way they perceive beauty. Our own beliefs shape how we see beauty. 
I spent some time musing about all the beautiful things and decided to list some that are surely some of the most beautiful things I have seen or experienced.  And it is only a very few as there is infinite beauty in the universe.

1. Becoming human. Our journey from the heavens includes becoming mortal. To become a human is to feel pain and love, happiness and joy, sadness and worry and all the emotions. But mostly it is becoming mortal that is the big part and thus the beginning of the list of most beautiful things in the universe.

2. Conception. Conception is the union of two souls to become one and for a human one of the most magical and mysterious of all events and thus most beautiful.

3. Birth of a child. For anyone that has witnessed childbirth, or as a mother experienced it, this is easy to see. It is the transformation into the real world, the first breath of air and the beginning of hunger, and independence.

4. A baby crying. It is the innocence and suffering of a baby that calls for beauty. For one that witnesses a baby crying it brings out the deepest compassion and desire to comfort. To see that the baby had its whole life ahead and all the experiences ahead of it, is a beautiful thing indeed. A baby laughing is beautiful, and a well known beauty, yet the crying is also as it gives one a chance to ponder deep into the power of pain and the glory of life.

5. The Earth. The earth itself is glorious beauty with all the elements to create and sustain life. From the beautiful clouds and weather to the mountains, stream and oceans, the plants and the animals, the earth is alive and most beautiful.

6. A Smile. As Shivangi Thakur said on Quora, "Beauty of smile lies in the purity of heart. Your smile is the mirror or reflection of your heart. It doesn't depend on the external goodness , it somehow connected to your inner charm. If you can make happy a crying kid with your smile then indeed your smile is beautiful. If you can take away all the tension of your beloved ones just because of your smiling face you possess that beauty. Smile is contagious, keep smiling , spread happiness :)"

7. Shadows. Without shadows we could not see anything but light. Nothing would be discernible. Thus light, darkness and shadows , along with reflections, all work in harmony as a great beauty of the universe. The sun, stars and moon are all beautiful, yet even stars require darkness, ‘shadows” to see.

8. A Tree. Not just a tree, but all trees. The benefits of trees are so great , it warrants many entire blogs on just why trees are so awesome. “Trees are the most beautiful creation of nature. blog by Rajshree Mathur Ghosh https://www.speakingtree.in/blog/trees-are-the-most-beautiful-creation-of-nature Just one of the reasons he lists is, " So wonderfully giving is their nature. And they give so generously without any grudge or bias. Everything about the Tree is for others. There is so much generosity in the life of a Tree. Only giving is their True nature."

9. Falling in Love. Perhaps arguable from a psychological standpoint, but falling in love is a transformation into a new plane. It is to tap, involuntary as if some power greater than ourselves, an otherwise unknown world of feeling. It has it’s own power and consciousness, is mysterious and intangible yet real to anyone in love or has fallen in love. With this being said, Love itself, should top any list of most beautiful things as I believe the universe was born, if not from love, then the desire for love.

10. Death. Death is not the end. Death is the way back home. We came to experience humanity, the joys and pains, the mortality of being a human and now we must experience the fruition of this mortality. Death is the doorway to return and our experience as a human has been fulfilled.

​continued below nature slideshow.

Of course there are many other beautiful things and if I wrote this list a week ago, or was to write it a year from now. the list would have some things changes, for the laughter of a child, the singing of a bird, a hug, a flower booming, there are so many experiences and things in the universe that would tie for any spot in the top ten. The stars, the rain, water, light, fire, a wedding, and so many more things are beautiful. It’s all beautiful. It would be easier to list the things that are not beautiful and many of those would be also be beautiful if beholden in the right light. 
​Rybird 2018

Primal earth conditions became suited for creating organic material spontaneously.
In the system of physics and chemistry as it existed, there became stable structures, and unstable ones, but at one point a replicator arose in this system, and grew to dominate. These became cellular organisms that, at first glance, seemed to be attempting to "survive", but have really were just been the most efficient replicator from a series of ancestors.
Then  a tipping point' or critical mass of sorts was reached where the primitive self replicators begin to survive. And through the process somewhere, consciousness sprang up as a more successful method to continue replicating and surviving. And upon becoming more complex organisms emotions and thought became the tools for survival. These complex feelings mixed with millions of years of instinct drive humans to question death. Then we try to answer the fundamental question "Who am I?" by engaging in the world, by growing, learning, through experiencing the world in some way or another. We have a readiness' for death as we project forward attempting to answer this question.
 Derived and condensed from Why does life strive to live?
at https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/drfu1/why_does_life_strive_to_live/ 
“At the fundamental level everything is energy, mass is just condensed energy, and we know from quantum physics all energy in the universe and in existence is interconnected. Everything influences everything else at the quantum level. This energy is God stuff. It is consciousness. Energy can also never be created or destroyed only transformed from one form into another. So in essence the energy has always been there forever and ever and will always be there forever and ever; it is infinite, it is God.  The universe behaves like ONE gigantic organism. With every part, equally as important as every other part. No Thing in the universe likewise could possibly be more superior fundamentally than any other thing. The whole being is greater than the sum of its parts. Ultimately everything in the universe is connected and influences everything else. It is impossible to differentiate one part of the whole from another part at the fundamental level because ultimately it is all made of the same stuff and acts and behaves like ONE. This encompasses All That Is.
So what’s the point you ask? The point and purpose of the universe is so that God could experience Itself and come to know Itself through creating within Itself.”
From The Universe as God at: http://www.gestaltreality.com/articles/the-universe-as-god/
continued below

Thus the illusion of separation is born. Ultimately there is no separation, but the illusion of separation at the superficial level serves a purpose. Without the illusion of separation without reference points you could not create, you could not experience! You would not know up from down, you would not know there, as oppose to here. The relative framework is setup perfectly to give rise to experience. Without it, it would be as if nothing existed. You could not compare yourself to anything and therefore you would not even know, you existed. Variety and diversity are extremely important because they help to differentiate one part of the whole from another. Time and space are also important so we can locate things relative to something else. In order for there to be even such a thing as ‘pleasure’ its polar opposite ‘pain’ must also exist and be experiential. Something can only exist with reference to its polar opposite. Everything in the universe appears in dualities. These are a fundamental need for existence and experience’s of the given nature.
 
What is the meaning of all this? Meaning is something that exists only temporarily in time. You can do something that will be meaningful to you today, but in a million years what does it mean?? Will anyone care, will you care? One thing is certain about the universe and that is change. NOTHING stays the same, and this gives rise to diversity. The universe even at the most basic energetic level is teeming with motion. There is no stasis and ultimately therefore you can never attach meaning to any one thing eternally. To attach meaning to any moment in time eternally you would have to freeze the entire universe and all of existence. You would have to stop life! And then it would be as if nothing existed.
Now there is no meaning yet there is purpose and the purpose of All That Is, is to experience and create. It’s a self discovery process on all levels of existence. You have been given free-will to create and experience life(God) in what ever way you choose. People often get caught up in a search for the meaning of life and try to artificially impose some sort of eternal meaning on something. It always fails. The point is to create and experience and the process of evolution allows you to learn more and more, and to create and experience with more variety and diversity. This is the true wonder of life. Adapted from From The Universe as God at: http://www.gestaltreality.com/articles/the-universe-as-god/
Rybird November 27 2017