Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical.
Sex appeal is fifty percent what you’ve got and fifty percent what people think you’ve got.
Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life. ~Sophie Loren
I grew up watching movies with Sophia Loren. I saw the beauty and I saw the imperfection. I started to look for it in me, and I found it. But I never thought other people can see it too.
In a way that is lucky: I was left alone to do my own thing, read, write, play music, run and walk in the mountains, swim… alone.
I am an introvert. My inner beauty was my own, I didn’t need others to see it.
Then at around 16 relationships happened, and social life, and crowds, big offices, noise… and I disappeared.
I used to go to the bathroom as a retreat, as a mental health facility, to be alone, to hopefully return to being me. It was rarely long enough to help.
When men told me I was beautiful, I knew that lust was speaking. I never tried to be beautiful.
Catering to others ultimately results in loss of self… Catering is not a doing, by the way, it’s a being… it is saying that the others matters only, and you don’t.
The pretense epidemic, Facebook, the “fake it till you make it”, the false laughs, the trying to fit in, trying to be accepted are all outward manifestations of “catering” and the loss of self.
It took me years to return to be me and be emotionally well.
I had an advantage: I had a core self and core self activities I could go back to, and slowly let go of “catering”, the need to be accepted, the need to be admired… the need to be special.
When I am treated as not special, it still comes back as disdain… but it is really rare.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But it is not just beauty. It is all the values… and it takes one to know one.
When you surround yourself with people of the “catering” persuasion, you’ll be bruised, and hurt, and slighted, and disvalued… that is the nature of the “catering” culture.
It only looks fun from the outside. Inside it is ugly, empty, and viciously backstabbing. Even relationships.
Unless two full adults enter it fully knowing that it can only survive if both parties are allowed to be themselves, and free… it is not beautiful: it’s a cage, it is a prison.
But, of course, every generation faithfully recreates themselves in the next one: into the catering culture, without a permission to be themselves and free.
Ugly.
PS: Most of the people who send me hate mail use their spiritual nature, loving, compassionate, like others use beauty. It is ALWAYS a sign of pretense, “catering”, ugliness.
I am lucky, I had two ex boy friends who I could see and feel, when they were by themselves and when they were catering. After all, I had to see both faces… and the emptiness behind.
These relationships were probably the most instrumental in me wanting to live a seamless life, a transparent life, where the self is constant, regardless of the circumstances.
I understand, but the problem with your approach is that it’s fear based, powerlessness based, not based on your sense of personal power.
I’m a lot like you, Sophie. I recognize myself in that I don’t need other people to see my beauty. I sometimes feel like becoming a hermit would be the path of least suffering for me. I sometimes feel certain that I’ll go for it one day, when I’m no longer willing to give ‘fitting in’ a second chance…