On Beauty

Are inner-beauty advocates only skin-deep?

An insecure teenage girl is scolded for obsessing over her looks. She's fat. She's mishaped. She's ugly...or so she thinks. In confusing and vunerable times, all she wants in acceptance. She's facing obstacles on a journey that has no map, no guide, and seeningly no hope. For facing flaws, "higher-minded" citizens will refuse to acknowledge that this girl is "beautiful".

Yet, when an immaculate rose springs from the ground, what's praised first? Beauty. How the blossoms are members of a complex, vivacious environment is ignored. How roses are part of the great cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth is suddely, shockingly secondary. Beauty is obvious and easy; it catches everyone's eye.

Does that leave all champions of inner gorgeousness to be condemned as liars, as mock beacons and false friends? For refusing to recognize beauty in the inwardly imperfect, but readily praising nature's supermodels, are they damned to philosophical hell?

Outer beauty, like certain skills and talents, is a child of nature. The flora and fauna were turning heads long before humans crept from the mud. However, beauty is one of the many victims of our corruption. Any practiciality or inspiration it held was buried. Today, we are meant to gaze at the grave's surface, mourning for something we will never know.

But, as the black tide recedes into the sea, resilient creatures linger on the shore. They will hear the bell. They will hear the passionate chimes, crying, "I'm alive! I'm alive!", and start digging.