Extreme makeovers are all the rage these days, with so many people addicted to beauty salons and reality shows. Many people are trying to match the extraordinary measures some actors and actresses take to look perfect on the screen. Yet, the shortcuts to attaining physical beauty don’t usually fulfill their promise. Besides, beautiful people are not automatically happy people.
Attaining the highest degree of beauty is not about looking good during social interactions or achieving physical perfection, and you can’t get there via technology. It’s a growth process, a transformation of self through awareness and learning. It’s about meaning and being real. It’s an emotional and spiritual walk, requiring faith fueled with liberal doses of loving kindness.
Every day, I have the delight and privilege of loving Richard, my husband, a real, human, and emotionally accessible man. We’re about the same age, and our looks have corroded a bit over time. After almost 20 years, though, we have grown together in ways that go far deeper than the surface of our skin. Our life is lovely even if it doesn’t match the criteria of love in movie fantasies. We laugh together, we share the struggles of daily life together, and the thought that he might die before I do fills me with dread. All the muscle-bound male models in the world couldn’t replace my very own, outgoing soul mate. It took me over 30 years to find him, and I’m not about to replace him with the so-called “esthetic perfection”.
I work as a psychotherapist, and clients come to my office every day scarred with emotional pain because their lives aren’t “perfect” enough. They feel inadequate, hopeless, and frustrated because they can’t attain life as they see it on the big screen. It helps when I preface our sessions with the mention that tens of thousands of dollars go into every second of media they see, that actors and actresses have dozens of people devoted exclusively to making them look good, and that the effort to maintain their images is an exhausting, full-time job. The “beautiful” people in the media are under enormous pressure to maintain their looks, and to me, it’s a good thing that my clients are exempt from that predominant pressure.
I underscore that no face creams, dietary fads, protein supplements, vitamin capsules, or meditation regiments are going to make people’s lives, bodies, or mental state much better. In fact, these things often hamper happiness by distracting them from what leads to real inner beauty. Life is not about maintaining some young and stylish outward costume for one to hide behind, as some people believe. It’s about growing and deepening one’s soul.
The only way I know to develop my soul is through feelings. Witnessing natural phenomena – the star-lit galaxy, a centuries-old redwood, the symphony of birds’ songs in spring – stretches it, making me feel humble and majestic, all at the same time. Human relationships bruise, collide, and comfort, teaching me maturity and passion. Love urges my soul to blossom and glow, and affection elicits feelings of eternity, so I learn to accept others as they are.
Most people in my life are not like those who are “beautiful” but barren and self-absorbed. We’re ordinary, real, and imperfect people. Together we work hard, stumbling through life, trying to be our best selves, knitting together families and friendships, and striving to illuminate the world with our personal ethics and aspirations.
We come from numerous backgrounds and don’t always approve of each other’s decisions, but we care for each other the best we can. We struggle to be less self-indulgent, more compassionate and understanding. We try to resist the lure of novelty fads and the manipulations of advertising. We survive through social phenomena that we don’t agree with, through interwoven natural and unnatural disasters that take our loved ones and possessions, and through fads and fancies that are often unhealthy. From each event, we learn, we stretch, we sometimes fracture, we process the emotional outcome, and we move on. These life events are the soul’s workout, and though we may groan and complain, we can feel the growth eventually.
The secret is that this growth is visible to others, and the effort registers on our entire being. It becomes an authentic element that makes our spirit glow radiantly. Have you ever seen elderly people whose wisdom shows in their eyes and whose love is evident as they gently enquire about your health and offer a brief sentiment that calms and affirms? The spirit that shines from within these people is true beauty, and it can’t be bought in a jar.
The miracle is that each of us has the total capacity to achieve this perspective, this fullest embodiment of the highest expression of soul, even as our mortal bodies wear out and degenerate.
In other words, true beauty is not about looks. It’s about choices. As we move through life and grow through each of its checkpoints, we should seek out and build the kinds of experiences that reveal and purify our inner beauty. We must look at our own lives and decisions from a more valuable perspective.
The decisions we make today affect the rest of our lives. We ourselves are ultimately the only people to whom we are accountable and for whom we are responsible. Each new decision we make can be a new resolution to build the beautiful future we long to have.