The older I get, the more I've come to see that there is almost no one amongst us who completely loves every last element of their body. Whether justified or not, most people have a laundry list of faults that they instantly hone in on when thinking or talking about their appearance. If I had a magic wand, I would wave it and free all of us from the silly, trivial, totally unfounded hang-ups that we have about our bodies.
We only get only body, you know. Perhaps in some distant sci-fi like future we'll have the ability to regenerate our own bodies or to transfer our brains from one body to another, but right there and now, for better or worse, we're each assigned one frame, one face, and one pair of arms and legs with which to transport us through every moment of every day we will ever have the profound honour of living.
Like many, I have struggled with my appearance my whole life. Cruelly put down by some of my own relatives as a child, teased mercilessly in school, and often my own harshest critic, it's taken me the better part of three decades to come to even a minor degree of peace with how I look. But I finally have, and to my mind that is a rather profound victory.
I realized at some point that I wasn't getting any younger, by which I mean that while I still have some vestiges of youth left (I'm 27, soon to be 28 in July), I should try and put aside as many of my woes with my body as I can (there are a couple of biggies that I may never truly reach that point with, but I'm elated that some are starting to slip away) and just love myself from here on out.
It's a ridiculously simple concept...loving one's own appearance, I mean, but darned if it isn’t staggeringly hard for many of us. I've always loved certain elements of who I was, but what the mirror cast back at me when I gazed into its shiny surface was rarely one of them.
I'm not perfect (laughably far from it actually), and neither are you. None of us are, and that is so immensely beautiful. Perfection is overrated. It is our uniqueness, our quirks and differences that set us apart and yet also unite us.
Life is filled with an endless sea of imperfect that combines to make the world a truly captivating and fantastically exciting place. Be it ancient architecture, the patina on a vintage piece of jewelry, or a delicious cake that rose a little more on one side than the other, we accept and embrace the signs of age, wear, or imperfection that is all around us on a daily basis, yet are the first to criticize even the tiniest of (perceived) faults that we see in ourselves.
Enough! We're beautiful, as Christina Aguilera once sang, in every single way. Really. Believe me, whatever you think is wrong or unattractive about yourself, I promise you there is someone out their who would sell their soul to look like you.
It's not easy, but we need to stop thinking that there is some unattainable standard of universal beauty that we need to reach. You are already universally beautiful simply because you are you.
{An image of me snapped on the fly recently my by husband, who has always had the kindest things imaginable about to say about how I look, as I was getting ready for a day of thrift store shopping with my mother.}
It may have taken 27 years, but I can say without feeling the need to prefix it with a bunch of "except fors", that I love the person I see when I look in the mirror. This body, with it's various scars and shortcomings, is also the house where my soul and mind dwell, and that trumps - by a long shot - any flaw that might exist.
Love yourself, respect yourself, and try to make peace with those things that you wish you could change. When all is said and done, it won't matter if you'd been two inches taller, had a larger chest, been born with one eye colour instead of another, had a longer neck, fewer wrinkles, curlier hair, lankier legs or anything else.
What will have mattered is the life you lived while inhabiting your own skin and the joy, comfort, companionship and love you brought into the lives of those that you encountered along the journey. Being, I assure you, beautiful the whole time.
