An interesting quote, I came across while watching the movie “A good year”. Even though I don’t totally agree with such statement, if we take beauty as an alignment of someone’s physique with society’s standards, that are instilled in us during our socialization and participation in society as such, the above statement couldn’t be far from the truth. Why so?
I believe there are some among us, that have faithfully allowed their colleagues, media, etc. to take charge over developing their own goals and life’s purpose. For them, the idea of having such a “standards complied” girl to be seen around with, alone presents the big enough source of satisfaction for all their needs. But all others, we need something more.. something with much more distant expiration date, something that will at once dismiss all our doubts and regrets, that could turn up while investing huge amounts of our love and energy into the selected person. And what is that “something”?
I believe it could be the respect of her/his personality and of course, some kind of a physical turn-on. The latter is already taken care of by our creator, we only need to find the way to manifest those charms at our best, but the former needs some more of our effort and attention. Nobody is born with an impressive character, only with its predispositions. Then it is up to us, how we’re going to develop it. And here comes the catch… our character consists of our habits, that are the result of continuous actions in its favor, and actions are the consequences of our thinking and philosophies. And as we are always heading along the path of the least resistance, we end up with two choices for altering the habits, which usually demand heavy effort end energy investments. Either we end up in conflicting situation that forces us to do so, or take our own initiative, which is quite illogically very rare (otherwise there wouldn’t have risen such business around quick diets, shortcuts to financial independence, etc.). And this is where that “standard beauty” become more of a curse, than a blessing. Because we tend to be much more sympathetic with the people that are most aligned with that social beauty standards. We are more likely to help them, and avoiding conflicts between us and them, by solving them in their favor. So people of such “curse” are much more likely to experience less life’s difficulties and therefore, the development of their character and good habits are very likely to stagnate, with slow or no positive development at all. Of course exceptions can be found, as they might have different problems (for an example, in a modeling world, it can be a very tough path to a successful career, with many testings of personal values, ethics, etc.), but I still believe that could only apply to a little minority, as for majority, the hypothesis described above could have a very solid grounds.
But what about beauty as such? The one above is mostly regarding to the society ideals, we are brainwashed by through different media channels and different traditions. But as for the other sorts, I’m strongly convinced It’s a very relative thing. As in economics, where there is some kind of demand, there can be some kind of value. So as nature made us, we’re all buyers at this, and we are the ones that put the “price tag” and express desirability over some personality or physical trait. And a question inevitably appears; What do we really value?
Not what the society expect from us, but what do we as individuals sincerely want? What character traits we respect most and what physical attributes turn us on most effectively? And as we all have different sets and combinations of these “preferences”, nature blessed us with the variety, that made it very possible for the “perfect” matches of our demands to be found. And to conclude, our “match” is as beautiful, as we make it. It all depends on how well we’re able to express this perfection, cherish it and welcome it in our life’s fairy tale. So there is no universal beauty, it all depends on how well we’re able to resonate with the chosen “perfection”, we decide to build our life around.
And lastly, to comment the title of this “article”… Most of the beauties (there are some exceptions of course) by so called “society standards” really are for the shallow “heroes” without any bright future in the eyes of a great character building and enjoying life in all its beauties on as many areas as possible. But for all others, we want something more… We want those angels, we could establish the greatest relationships with, and transform them to our best friends, as well the intimate ones, as the ones on the other areas of our cooperation. We search for the soul mates in creation, the most divine shape of the interlaced blissfulness for every individual, that will ever come in existence, called true love… And can such materialistic attitude towards beauty (as pointed out in the title) ever be the core foundation for this sensational, almost spiritual leveled feelings? I don’t believe so…
Why wasting your precious time for people having no sincere intent in building of quality win-win relationship? Because we (or at least I) have better time to do with our (my) life, than supporting those “phony-confident” persona’s, searching only for confirmation from others in every walk of life possible. And there are many of them.. Especially on social-networking sites, many are presenting themselves (especially women) in various wannabe-sexy poses, hoping to be followed with as many unoriginal and overused-phrase comments as possible. And sooner or later they are grounded with the value of such compliments; they might be intriguing at first, but over time, their value decreases exponentially.. So why not rather invest, the time spent, in consolidating the relationships they are really interested in, and over time, get the opinions they could actually value? At least in my view, that would be a much better investment, especially if we also take in account Pareto principle, that could be saying, that we get 80% of our “relationships qualities” from 20% of folks we are involved with, and other 20% from the other 80% of the folks involved. So why dispersing our energy and intents all over the place, and not giving the first 20% our special attention for further improvement of our interactions, and that way creating a circle of friends from which opinions we could actually value?
At least as I see it, I (as probably everyone else) have an abundance of various qualities to offer, but have no intent to disperse them all over the place.. Because only when they fell on fertile ground, they can work miracles, which is the only sustainable effect I will ever be pleased with. Because life’s quality is all about those little miracles, those little cherish-able situations that nourish and motivate us every single time when experienced.. So why spending so much time on banalities, when we should be overwhelmed with pursuing our happiness and lifelong goals?
Tags: abundance, goals, happiness, Life, purpose, relationships
As knowledge can be fairly reachable nowadays, due to the information overload we are faced with, its application is probably more difficult than ever. As an example we could take my clumsy approach to all sorts of relationships.. Despite of the fact that that is one of the areas of my great interest, and all of the knowledge I’ve gathered during the research of this phenomenon, I still have a habit of making such basic and stupid mistakes, that sometimes is quite hard and embarrassing to face the results of my doing. Even though I know very well, how you need to let the time to do its own job, I can fairly easy get distracted into my general attitude towards all other life challenges, where target is focused and than great deal of effort and persistence is invested into completion of the desired goal. This works great with other things, but is a disaster when dealing with relationships, as it gives an uncomfortable feeling of being obsessively harassed. Everything else than good behaviour than, so it needs to be eliminated as soon as possible, but as with every change in our behavioral patterns this too will take time and will be done gradually, so for now, we just say that nobody is perfect. 
But as bad habits can be destructive, good ones can be beneficial to our activities. I still believe that much more than time, energy is the main constraint to all our goals, so it is the main subject that needs to be optimized, while we strive to higher performance and better life quality. This can be done through various things, like changing our diet, working out, getting enough sleep, lowering impact of different negative emotions, and many others, together with our positive habits. Because when you make a habit out of some repetitive task, the energy demand for its completion will fall drastically. As an example you can go back in your memory and remember how much more effort you needed to invest in your driving when you were just learning, towards today. Especially if you drive to work every day, pay attention on how much you remember about the surroundings you were driving through when you get to work or get home. Sadly, but most of us would have no idea about the trip details when asked. So much about safe driving.
So bad habits as well as good ones can be cultivated. Good ones usually a bit harder, but it’s well worth it. For example, I’ve set myself a habit of waking up early, do some physical exercise to wake myself up and be ready for that day’s challenges, and also a habit of spending an hour daily on learning things I think will be most beneficial for my near future. And as you can guess, waking up at 6 o’clock when you have no time constraints (like job etc.) can be pain in the ass, go running or doing some other physical exercise even bigger as also egoistically taking an hour daily for your personal “matters” which aren’t even a priority at the moment. Especially when we so hardly find time for anything other than our job, college or family. But think of the benefits of physically better prepared and more immune body or having a 365 hours long learning course every year and all the knowledge you would gather… Probably wouldn’t hurt you, would it? But it’s all up to you…
Tags: character, habits, optimization, performance, potential
Thank God for our subconsciousness and imagination. Because our mind as such is quite limited and at times can barely follow the pace of today’s life and that’s where our subconsciousness and imagination can step in. Empty your mind of all the unnecessary routines you are building through your life (technology is here to help you) and all of the “banalities” you get bombarded with through your daily interactions and I can guarantee you much better peace of mind and far less stress. Employ your mind to do the real work, just what it is made for and don’t pollute it with every even so irrelevant information that might come on your way. And remember: integrity (with your value system) works miracles when it comes to avoiding this kind of information and unnecessary, excessive and overrated daily emotional dramas and such.
Tags: imagination, integrity, mind, subconsciousness
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