Hold the Line

Here is a quote I came across in Mark Helprin's A Solider of the Great War:

To see the beauty of the world is to put your hands on lines that run uninterrupted through life and through death. Touching them is an act of hope, for perhaps someone on the other side, if there is another side, is touching them, too.

This gave me chills when I heard it (audiobook). It was spoken by the main character, a man who has made a study of aesthetics, and a study of the study of aesthetics: the beauty of the world.

Isn't this what we are trying to do when we create, or read, or visit a museum, or sit on a rock watching clouds race? To create, or uncover, and share a line that can exist and affect people after we have left the room or left the world.