Not Defined By Our Appearance

  Defined By Our Appearance

“If the mirror doesn’t give me much back, it’s because it’s not designed to reflect the things within me that make the reflection truly magnificent.”

• Craig D. Lounsbrough

The world has set an airbrushed standard of what we’re supposed to look like. This photoshopped menagerie of idealized versions of a perfected humanity demands something of us that none of us can achieve. Even those whose images are altered to this definition of perfection are themselves nothing of the sort.

The culture defines beauty but it cannot demonstrate what they define as beauty unless they fabricate it. Physical perfection is the illusion that eludes anyone who claims it or pursues it. It’s the design of people who themselves cannot achieve the design that they both create and propagate. This perfection is declared as some pinnacle whose pursuit is the holy grail of our existence. It is decreed as the key that opens doors that will never open for the less desirable. It will elicit favors that the more homely among us can never elicit. In essence, it’s value is non-negotiable.

 

Misappropriated Investments

Therefore, we rigorously invest in a host of surgeries, a variety of cutting-edge procedures, and an assorted collection of creams and lotions. We sweat through an endless variety of trendy workouts that claim to put us one step closer to this pinnacle of our humanity. We dive into whatever diet that happens to have the blessing of some trending celebrity or health guru. We spend hours preening in front of the mirror. We take thousands of selfies in order to capture just the right angle that accentuates everything that we want to accentuate, and that hides everything that we don’t.

Our interactions with the world around us becomes dictated by a shrewd and entirely exhausting game of flaunting that which we believe to be beautiful and disguising that which we don’t. We are driven to present a pristine self that is pressed, clean, orderly, well-groomed, tight in the right places, and loose in the places that enhance our appearance.

 

The Priority of Our Appearance

Imagine, if you will, the amount of energy that we invest in our appearance. Imagine the amount of time, money, and personal resources that we squander on what we look like. And with such a grossly disproportionate investment in the external, the internal goes wanting. The essential essence of who we are is left languishing as the red-haired step-child to the physical part of ourselves that can never and will never define the whole of ourselves. We are ambushed by the power of the airbrush  

 

The Vulnerability of the Veneer

Your humanity is too vast to be held hostage to the veneer of your appearance. The essence that you bring to your world is housed in the powerhouse of your humanity, not the smoothness of your complexion. Your abilities will always outclass your body type. Flexing a muscle changes nothing. Flexing your mind can change everything.

The veneers are a pathetic representation of what we think will garner the affection and attention of a world from which we seek acceptance at the sacrifice of self. Veneers are a mortifying trade-off where our desperate need for acceptance drives us to betray ourselves in a deathly exchange of identity for acceptance.

 

Defining Ourselves By Our Appearance

Despite its destructive nature, this photoshopped menagerie of idealized versions of a perfected humanity reigns over a deluded culture. It is the template by which all other templates are judged, modified or mortified. It is the reflection demanded of every mirror.

Acquiescing to this weak standard, we begin to judge ourselves in relation to that standard. We lay out some sort of culturally-biased continuum in our heads and then we gauge our value based on where we place ourselves on that continuum. We live a life where the entirety of our resources are spent fighting our way up that continuum. The understanding of who we are and any value that we possess becomes based on where we’ve landed on that continuum and how aggressively we’re working our way up it (or have fallen down it).

In the book, “The Self that I Long to Believe In,” I wrote the following:

“Our existence alone is the greatest statement of our worth and the clearest evidence as to our value. What we do with that existence is up to us. But the sheer reality of that existence evidences value. The fact I am writing this and you are reading this attests to the fact that we both have immense value because we both exist to do both of those things.”

That thought is build upon by a later quote in the book which reads:

“Each of us needs to embrace the fact that our value is in who we are. And we need to widen that thought by understanding that this value that we carry within us exceeds our greatest estimation of it. It will readily eclipse anything that we do.”

None of this has anything to do with our appearance. The essence of your greatness is not based on what you look like in any mirror. It’s based on what you want to do with the person that’s in the mirror. It’s ferreting out the rich storehouse of gifts, talents, and abilities that reside within the heart. These will handily eclipse any reflection.

I would go so far as to say that cultivating who you are will lend such a power and vibrancy to your presentation that your physical appearance will be swallowed up in release of who you are. People won’t seek you out because of how you look. They will seek out because you radiate something that swallows up the superficiality of what they’ve spent their lives pursuing.

 

The Reflection of Your Soul, Not Your Face

“Taking It to Our Knees – Declaring Who I Am” outlines thirty-one “I am” statements that God has made regarding who you are. These are the reflections that have value. These are the reflections that grant our lives the power and sense of satisfaction that no other reflection will be able to deliver. Indeed, they are what’s truly beautiful. They are elegant. Their beauty deepens with age and their power multiplies with time. Your appearance is enhanced to the point that no mirror can contain it or reflect it. That is what the following “I am” statements will deliver into your life, today and every day.

You will find “Taking It to Our Knees – Declaring Who I Am” on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.

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