We are so convicted in our subjectivity sometimes. Like, unmoved and relentless!
There’s no one time this annoys me more than when we sit on the judgement throne of beauty. We live in the matrix, we will not deny or act holy, what we perceive of beauty is societal and learned through living – be it through the media, community or family standards. We often don’t know when we picked up our perception of what is beautiful and along with that we have no idea where they were first introduced, yet we live and conform to them all our lives.
Now while I can accept the binary that makes up life, if there is good, there is evil, if there is beauty, the opposite should also exist, salt and sugar, black and white, and so on it goes. Of all these things however, beauty is subjective. Another person’s gorgeous is the next person’s hideous.
Which begs the question. What is beauty anyway? Seems to me that by the physical standard, it is a fleeting construct.
Then you get those who believe beauty begins within. A thing of character, perhaps even personality. This outshines whatever physical attributes you may have, it’s a more permanent and consistent quality, it wont change with age, or a bad hair day. This perhaps is closer to the truth.
Beauty is an experience.
I have come to find, time and again, that I personally see beauty in people who had everything counting against them but still remained poised, honourable, courageous, ethical and steadfast. Who remained soft and malleable, who remained kind and generous, who looked at their circumstances and took in a deep breath while deciding to not be defined by a situation, be it a bad day or a horrible year. I will not deny that physical beauty catches the eye first, but often I’ve found the people who remain beautiful throughout time, in my perception, are those who have been dealt a heavy hand and came out winning.
By this then, surely I cannot say how beautiful you are until I get to know you. And even more, your beauty is then incomparable, you cannot be less or more beautiful than anyone else, because no one else is you.
I’ve spent a lot of time wondering why it concerns us so much if people are beautiful or not. Being surrounded by a lot of beautiful people myself, I have come to learn that there’s something intangible that a beautiful person brings into a room, something that someone carrying opposite characteristics cannot reflect.
So all in all, it’s that positivity we seek. We are all in the hunt for beauty, because life is a little more bearable when we are surrounded by it.
Xoxo