Beauty
on the Inside
“But
photographs, like mirrors, are notorious liars. The truth is: Adelaide was the
most beautiful being I have ever seen in this world or any other, if we understand
beauty to be a kind of vital, ferocious burning at the soul’s center that
ignites everything it touches.”
Alix
E. Harrow (The Ten Thousand Doors of January, p.96; Redhook Books, 2019)
This
short paragraph from Alix Harrow’s book, The Ten Thousand Doors of January,
is an example of the delicious writing you will find in the whole book. It is
also one of the best descriptions of beauty I have ever seen. I wonder when we
humans became so concerned with physical beauty that it supersedes this idea of
inner beauty. I still find myself looking in the mirror and castigating my image for its
imperfections. It reminds me of Temperance Brennen in the television show, “Bones,”
describing an attractive person as having “a pleasing symmetry of facial structures,”
but the real woman, Emily Deschanel, said, “Real beauty is being aware of
yourself and honest about who you are.”
When you
think about physical beauty, what/who jumps to mind first? I must say, Paul
Newman came pretty darn close to perfection in my worldview. As it happens, he
also had a beautiful heart. I think of Lady Gaga—who has non-traditional beauty
that comes from the fire inside her that “ignites everything it touches.” She
also is a generous and courageous person. Today’s equivalent may be the
lovelies of BTS—androgenous and equally beautiful as masculine or feminine. But
their “Army” of mental health professionals is what speaks loudest. They are
the honey; their Army is the cure.
In
2019, Americans spent 16.5-billion dollars on cosmetic plastic surgery. A
staggering amount, but not first place. Brazil leads the world in the number of
such surgeries, and Australia ranks in the top ten. There is nothing wrong with
wanting to look better. Who doesn’t? But does it stop at correcting physical
flaws? Are we equally concerned with inner beauty? What about people who do not
fit the parameters of “pleasing facial symmetry” or who, due to genetics, are not
pleasing to the eye?
I ponder
these things, knowing in my heart of hearts that I, too, weigh people
differently who are physically beautiful from people who are not. It may be
some vestige of the laws of attraction that plays these internal tapes. But I
also know that beauty must be more than skin deep to move the heart. It must come
from a “vital, ferocious burning at the soul’s center.” When we see
that, my friends, we behold true beauty.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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