Beauty and Success: By These Standards, They are the Same

I saw something the other day on the internet that got me thinking.  It was a count of the number of young girls who have posted online videos posing one simple question: “Am I pretty or am I ugly?”  Coming from a history of being that girl who needed that tell-me-I’m-pretty-validation, I totally get it.  But having moved on and finally owned the knowledge that I am pretty because of what I am, not because of how I look, seeing this information and these girls begging for validation kills me.  It hurts my spirit.  It reminds me of a former me. 

I have had men in my life with whom I placed all of the faith in the relationship in the fact that he found me pretty.  I thought that I was set, that we were set, that pretty girls get what they want and nothing ever goes wrong.  Enter reality.  Because reality knows a few things.  It knows that truly beautiful women need no validation from anyone, for anything about themselves.  It knows that there are millions of pretty girls out there and that you are simply one of millions like you in that regard.  It also knows that nothing built on superficial foundations will ever last.  And most importantly, it knows that no one will ever truly find you pretty until you are able to honestly and completely find it within yourself. 

Now, don’t get me wrong here.  Because I am comfortable with my own contradictions I am going to make the following statement:  I don’t NEED you to tell me I am pretty, but you should DO IT regardless.   Every girl likes a little flattery now and then.  It reminds us that we are still human and we should not stop trying.  But what you should really do, what really makes a girl feel beautiful, is when you honestly allow your reactions to her happen.  When you use your inhibitions to mask your feelings and involuntary reactions, you are denying her of her influence on your emotions, denying her esteem of the knowledge that she is important to another person; you are corroding her intent to simply make you feel a moment of happiness. 

So, when you walk past where I am standing, oblivious to your presence until I glance up and catch you staring, don’t avert your eyes.  When we cross paths and the sight of me makes you start to smile in spite of yourself, don’t shut it down.  Keep looking.  Let me see that smile.  Make that contact and, for just a moment, allow me the feeling of satisfaction that I am succeeding, that I just created in you a moment of happiness.  Or interest.  Or confusion.  Or whatever it was you were feeling that made you react.  Letting me know that I am important, or interesting, or even undefinable is a gift that you give, a gift with which you should not be stingy.

Because, for me, a large part of my life’s goals are to be genuine and honest with those around me; to find a love for every soul that I come into contact with.  And while it is a fact that there will be some that I love differently than others, my purpose is still to love all.  I want my beauty to impact you in a way that takes your breath away, and I want to hear that sharp intake of breath from across a crowded room when I walk in; not because I look good, but because I am good.  I want my presence in a room, a life, or a conversation to be larger than I can ever know because unseen things were taking place in your heart and mind that left your condition a little bit better when it was all over. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson said that “to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.  That is to have succeeded”.  I agree, Mr. Emerson, but not completely.  I want to also make some lives breathe harder, I want some to have their breath taken away time and again, and I want some to just hold a steady breath when that is all they can muster.  I will have succeeded when I know that all the lives I touch keep breathing, not because or in spite of me, but with me, in love, always.   And that kind of success is beautiful.