WHAT’S BEAUTY TO YOU?

We live in a funny era. We live in a time when adopting a defined image sets the bar for being acceptable. I watch so many people imprisoned by images. I watch people waste behind a thoughtless camouflage. I have come to ask myself, “What is beauty to me?”

I have seen men hit their wives for being fat. Parents even hate their kids for not being pretty enough. Blacks bleaching to be white, whites tanning to be dark. The fake weaves, eye lashes and colors we ladies have adopted.  The painful demands of a critical world have carved an expectation of beauty we women consistently adopt; the insecure idols on TV living an illusion we desperately seek to emulate. Muscles, chocolate bars have replaced character and self-worth.

Why have all these beautiful images we create and adopt not given us; the desired relationships, respect, self confidence, the desired marriage? Simple a farce only begets a farce. When we live in an imperfect world and adopt zero tolerance towards any slight imperfection; who are we deceiving? If we spent just half the effort trying to look good inside as we do on the outside, this world will be a much better place.

After a long time of searching for self identity, this is what beauty is to me;

-it is waking up each morning and being thankful for the person I see in the mirror

- It is loving myself enough not to be thrown off by someone’s painting of what I should be

- It is striving to be the better of who I was born to be from day to day

-it is embracing the colors of nature, voice of culture and the divinity of God; all that makes me what I am…

Your eyes should be your mirror…the image you place on yourself is what you will be. As a lady, the man God has destined for you would look in your eyes and see who you really are. As a man, knowing and standing in your own image sets you as a leader. It is time we stopped living as products of other people’s insecurity. If you are okay and beautiful as you are and someone can’t accept that, then they suffer from ugliness on the inside and are trying to project it unto you. I am wonderfully and prayerfully made. I am the image of a loving God.

Have you been left in a place where you feel alone, worthless or ugly? Look around you! Look up to the Heavens! You are ugly and worthless to people blinded by ugliness. They want you to hurt as much as someone else hurt them. You are here because someone needs you. Your ability is an answer to someone’s inability. If you get lost in someone’s ‘ugly’, it will obscure the world from your beauty. It is time we trade the masks for ambition, creation and resourcefulness. Do not underrate you life because of an ugly estimate from an insecure overrated person. What’s beauty to you?