Be your own kind of beautiful.
There are a million versions of beauty in the world…beautiful people, beautiful souls, smiles, rooms, objects, music, food, clothing, sounds, moments…you name it. Beauty is an important part of our lives, and not just on the surface. It moves us, it brings us pleasure, makes us smile, swoon, and sometimes cry. It makes our heart beat and it can feed our soul…and one of the things I love most about it is that is entirely relative. I love that there are as many different recipes for beauty out there, as there are people. Your version and mine will most likely look different in many ways. If 20 people in a room created their own collage mood board of everything they find beautiful, you would see 20 very different versions of beauty. Nothing to judge, only to observe. And each one of us could make 100 different boards on any given day.
This also means that every piece of the collage that makes YOU up; every part of your being, nature, and soul is a beautiful vision to someone, many someoneS, probably. A woman I met said, “I’m not an attractive woman, I’m awkward. Weird.” (and while I could see the awkward, weird thing she was talking about (and totally dug it), she was in fact very beautiful to me. She had that kind of attractive energy that just dripped from her pores and left you not knowing if it was her physical being or her energy that made her seem beautiful) couldn’t tell, didn’t matter. When I spoke to her again a year later or so, she was in a new relationship and said, “I get it. I am a cup of tea. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but someone’s.” You can walk through this world with your head held high, and meet the eyes of people you pass KNOWING you are beautiful. We all belong here. We are all beautiful. Someone is digging us, just the way we are.
That is half of it. The other half is choosing to see the beauty around us, or the beauty in someone or something. And it IS an active choice. Sometimes it’s easy, and sometimes it is a matter of pulling it up close and looking at it with new eyes, or from a different angle…or becoming authentically curious, and actively (not passively) seeking to find something you appreciate about it.
A friend of mine is exceptional with this (and by “this” I mean seeing the beauty in others). She told me about how she had just started studying this body of work about the wisdom of faces…and how facial features can possibly tell you a lot about a person’s personality or nature. Interesting. And of course, my first question was, “what does my face tell you.” Hahaha. But what struck me most about what she was doing, wasn’t so much that a certain feature might mean you are good with boundaries or not…[eyebrows, in case you are wondering…and I’m filling mine in as we speak] but moreso how she said this body of work changed HER experience of looking at people…she said, “now, EVERYONE, looks interesting and fascinating to me. I am constantly of in AWE, all the time. It’s so cool! There are soooo many versions of beauty. ” She said it made people more attractive and fun to look at. No judgment, just curiosity and a sense of wonderment. She was newly excited to meet people and to get to know them.
I love that. It was SUCH a simple and deliberate choice. We can ALL make that choice and have more fun, and fill our eyes and souls up with more beauty. Since then I have actively made that choice, and have never come across a person that I couldn’t find at least one genuinely attractive thing about them. That was a life-changer (thanks, Ann!)
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