Those who bring out the beauty in others

Have you ever watched the famous movie "Malèna?"! It's a film about a stunning woman living in a small Italian village whose husband is away on war, so she's being treated like dirt by the fellow women in the village, because of jealousy, however she is also being treated like a piece of "prized meat" by the men. She was lonely and taken advantage of because of her beauty but at the end of the film when her husband comes back, she becomes old enough not to be a threat to the other women, you can see that she lost her glow and dressed in a dull way. Then they started to treat her as a human being. The bottom line here is sometimes the world cannot handle beauty, it gets too intimidated by its light, So I’d rather be born happy than born beautiful.

Everyone thinks they’re flawed. Every single person has one thing they don’t like about themselves, and other people wouldn’t even notice it. People look at their own faces more than anyone else, and it can obviously lead you to notice every single detail on your face. You might think your ugly, but it doesn’t mean everyone will think you’re ugly as well. Even the most beautiful people think they’re ugly because every single person compares themselves to other people.

Speaking as someone whom beauty has studiously avoided, beauty is so important because we evolved to try and bond with the fittest potential mate we could possibly bond with. Which is true of pretty much every sexually reproducing animal on Earth. why should we be any different? The only thing making us different from most other mammals is that the needs of human children mandate that humans maintain pair bonds for decades instead of days or hours or minutes.

That means what we find beautiful involves more than physical beauty, but it just means we’ve evolved to seek both physical beauty and the traits that make, say, a 30 year-long relationship work. Homely people and whirly-eyed egalitarian ideologues hate this. Why shouldn’t obese people wear skimpy bathing suits? Why should only strikingly attractive people get to star in movies? Why do beautiful people get a better deal from life than the rest of us?

Because evolution doesn’t care about your ideals. It cares in a blind, brainless sort of way about the wellbeing of the gene pool. Think of what makes someone beautiful. Physical fitness. The appearance of emotional fitness. Symmetrical features. Clear complexion. Abundant head hair. Even teeth. In women, a .7 waist-hips ratio. In men, height. In both, an ability to dance. Composure and resourcefulness in adversity. Cheerfulness under most circumstances. Empathy tempered with the ability to be hard when necessary. Enjoying the respect of others.

Our DNA shouts that this is what you want and should strive to be as best you can. Now DNA isn’t law. And it isn’t fair, as I’ve said. And here’s a reality check: relationships last longest between people who are equally attractive overall. Beauty-beast relationships are inherently unstable. If you’re fat and pimply, find someone fat and pimply to spend your life with. But DNA is an everpresent force you can’t just wish away because it doesn’t suit your ideology. Humans are not blank slates. Human nature can be modified by culture and individual experiences, but it’s still there under everything else.

Nor am I talking about being happy. As it happens, Mother Nature doesn’t care in the slightest whether we’re happy. It “cares” whether your gene pool is successful. Hence all the self-deluded schmoes who try to hook up with someone who’s out of their league. But that only works when the beauty is materialistic and the schmoes is rich. And I’m not sure I’d call that “working.” I don’t think such relationships are often happy.

The world is full of duality - beauty/ugliness, good/bad, right/wrong, love/fear, hate/like, honesty/lie, order/chaos, man/woman, night/day, birth/death, etc.. It is a built-in feature of this world. We choose between them using our free will. There is beauty in things, like - nature, faces, sunset, pets, cars, etc. Likewise, there is intangible beauty - poetry, arts, mathematics, feelings and emotions like love empathy, heroism. Good character, piousness, intelligence, wit, wisdom, virtue, etc.

Sense and appreciation of beauty is inherent in us, like ‘to love and be loved’ is inherent in all. We all yearn, long for its beautiful feeling. Just like when we are in love with someone and that someone loves us back. It is a very wonderful and beautiful feeling. It is actually our forgotten natural relationship with God- the all-beautiful Supreme being. But, we misplaced it in this world and so we only end up frustrated and lonely in the end, especially at death. Only God can give us lasting happiness, the beautiful feeling that will never be taken away from us. Cheers!