Beauty Beheld

To anyone who thinks mirrors have power, you are wrong.

A mirror is a piece of glass placed in front of a dark backing so that light carrying the image of you and the bathroom sink can reflect off the backing, through the glass and be delivered to your eyes.

Mirrors are aids, and if the only thing you use them for is to decide how you look on any given day, they are unnecessary.  

Here’s a test.  Right now, what is wrong with the way you look?  No cheating?  No mirrors.

Could you come up with something?  And without even looking at a mirror.  Strange.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the way you look depends 100% on how you perceive yourself before the delivery.  The mirror presents the package, and you paint it with your own ideas and prejudices.  

I will never be one to say there are no ugly people in the world.  I have seen some ugly people in my life.  Hundreds of them.  Every day it seems like I meet another actually.

We all know about them.  They're the snarlers, the tight-lipped busy-bodies, the beady-eyed liars, and the gaping-faced crazies, all consumed with disapproval or hate.  The feelings that course through you, and corrupt you as surely as lead or bad blood, turning your own features against you.  There is nothing attractive about a person wrong to the core.  There just isn't

But for the hundreds of ugly people I know, there are thousands of beautiful people who make up for it.

The same way ugly is tied to hate, beauty is tied to kindness, but it's also tied to eccentricities, and individuality, and courage.  The person in the summer dress running through the rain; she is beautiful.  The man in a mismatched suit nervously preparing himself for his first day of work; he is beautiful.  The painter, the sculptor, the actor, the dancer clothing covered in smudges of clay/paint/sweat; they are beautiful.

But beauty is also more complex than ugly.  Ugly is disarray.  Ugly can be left outside, forgotten, and it only grows stronger.  Beauty is more delicate.  Beauty is the candle fire at risk in the wind or burning on a thin wick.  Beauty needs more than simply kindness to survive.  Beauty needs courage, and confidence, because every time you question yourself, every time you stand before a mirror and pick at your flaws, the fire that is your personality dims.

You won't become ugly if you’re self-conscious, but you won't be beautiful.  Not as beautiful as you could be.

So when you look in the mirror, and the light that is you travels through the glass and is delivered to you in a blank package, your options are as follows:

1.  Corrupt it.  Be bitter.  Be spiteful.  Be angry.  Paint the package with vomit green and slush brown and a bright shade of red (just so everything clashes).  Then hit it with a hammer for reassurance.

2.  Suffocate it.  Remember that your hips are too big (and they never are.  Hips don't lie), that your arms are too small, or that, for some reason, you just don't like the way you fit together.  Focus on the edges and spend your time sanding them down until your package loses its initial shape.  Color the package tan to match the flooring and watch it disappear, shrunken and camouflaged into the background.

3.  Love it.  Paint it any color.  Decorate it with any shade.  And leave it out knowing no matter how many jealous and misguided #1's despise it or quiet and uncertain #2's fear it, that the rest of us will love it as much as you.  And know that it brightens our day.

Be happy.  Be healthy.  And behold.