I read this great blog (my go-to for a lot of fashion tips), and the author began this guest author segment called Beauty-ful Tuesday. I thought just in case I am asked to include my thoughts on beauty, I'd like to be prepared. Here are my thoughts for the day.
I feel like my life has been a lesson on acceptance. Whether that's accepting my body, my face, my circumstances, or just accepting others and everything that goes with them. Some situations and people are easy to accept and love and it's just a natural kind of connection, other things take work. (i.e. Accepting my long, thick, blond hair is fairly easy; accepting my dysfunctional ovaries is a bit more challenging.) Some days I go to sleep at night wishing I'll wake up as a size 6 with clear skin (which explains the inordinate amount of skin remedies I have in the bathroom cabinets). Then I wake up and start my day disappointed with myself. Too often I spend my time trying to figure out how to balance changing the person I am into who I want to be and accepting the person that I am right now and spit in that skinny, clear-skinned girls face (nobody likes skinny, clear-skinned girls anyway).
Surprisingly, I think I've been doing it wrong.
To accept something means you take it as it is, and are happy. But, acceptance is no way to treat something that you interact with everyday, that you can control (to some extent), and that is eternal. My body, my beauty, does not need acceptance from me. It needs to be embraced! When I think of the people that are easiest for me to accept and admire, I realize acceptance is only the beginning of those relationships. I embrace those people. I want them to envelope me with their beauty, excitement, and wonder. I want to be surrounded by each of them so completely because they inspire me to develop qualities that I already have into characteristics of the person I hope to someday become.
From now on, I think I'll try to first accept my imperfect beauty of today, and embrace my potential beauty of eternity. Accept then embrace, the latter of which means (to me) doing all I can to develop, strengthen, and transform today's imperfect beauty into a perfected beauty that I can truly be proud of.
Isn't that what eternity is for? To improve and perfect what we have been given? And just because my beauty isn't perfected yet does not mean that I don't have all the ingredients inside of me already to get me there.
Giving up on my beauty now would be like throwing out some blackened bananas because their beauty is not obviously there. I am a blackened banana: full of over-ripe potential preparing to make some delicious banana bread!
But not banana nut bread. Nobody likes nuts in their bread; dysfunctional ovaries; or skinny, clear-skinned girls. Okay, I maybe wrong about the girls, but I stand by the nut-thing. And the ovaries.
***Just to be clear, if I ever write an auto-biography, I call dibs on the title
"I Am a Blackened Banana: A Memoir". Respect the dibs!***
4 comments:
Your post left me a bit confused. So, are you still going to be focused on trying to get down to the size 6 and working the skin care remedies until you find one that makes your skin look flawless? Or are you going to embrace who are are despite all the things you have tried thus far and focus on the eternal perspective, in that one day you will have a perfect body, thereby eliminating the disappointment that comes from realizing we aren't perfect now?
Oh, and just one more thing: Your calf looks wicked awesome in that last photo of yourself. :)
I'm sorry Crystal. It was probably a bit of a confusing post. I was trying to say that I think acceptance maybe the way to see past the imperfections that I have, but that acceptance is only step 1. Step 2 is to embrace them, which to me means develop, strengthen, and transform them from a blackened banana into banana bread. Hopefully that makes sense, and sorry about the confusion.
And thanks for the compliment!
Loved this! Brilliant, really--accepting our imperfect beauty of today and embracing our potential beauty of eternity.
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