Saturday 16 August 2014

I Want to be Beautiful

That is the title of the word document that makes me simultaneously sad and angry when I read it. I wrote it after a bottle of wine and a bad day. I am pretty sure that tells you all you need to know to picture its contents: pessimistic and endlessly self critical, it repeatedly questions my self worth and value. I have never had a huge amount of self esteem, though outwardly confident, it soon becomes apparent in my constant self deprecating comments that I am far from at ease with who I am and how I look (I am working on this I promise). But for some reason this particular sentence got to me. I think it is because I was seeing beauty in an extremely one dimensional way (easily done after a bottle of wine): as skin deep. As a fictional, magical almost mythical quality which is nigh on impossible to attain (naturally I would aim for the impossible). I failed to see that in fact real beauty is indeed special, but not nearly as rare or unattainable as I like to think.

Beauty is so much more than looks. It is everywhere. Beauty is in our smiles, our laughter, it's in our easy friendships and it's in the music of our voices, the moments of tenderness with the people we love. It is in the most ordinary moments, the times which we keep for ourselves that forever remain a place where no other person will ever tread or spoil. Beauty is even in pain: in the tears shed from a heart that has loved and lost, in the person who finds the strength to fight through their pain. It is in the tiny bit of hope which glows like an ember in the ashes. Beauty is in our story: in the experiences that have shaped and molded us. Beauty, is a matter of the heart, not of the skin. And that is the kind of beauty we should be chasing, the beauty of a heart which loves and hopes, even a midst the chaos of life and its continuous surprises.