The Beautiful Truth

Our egos take a bow here every day. Everywhere we go, it’s always, “Fine girl!” or “Hey, baby”. Once I even got a demand to show my asshole to someone. I admit that one threw me off. Pretty much because it was really demanding and specific. Anyway, we’re pretty hot shit here. Not through anything that we do, but because we’re white. Foreign. Different.

Anyway, it’s simply good self preservation to remind yourself that you’re not really that special, and you’re really not that attractive (95 degree weather with 105% humidity is no one’s friend). You begin to write it off and soon, you realize that irony of ironies, the place where you get the most compliments is the place you feel least attractive.

I didn’t realize the damage of this habit of Americans until recently. I was with one of my best friends here, a person who is far and away one of my favorite people I’ve ever known. He told me that he feels like he blends in and that people don’t notice him. That he wasn’t anything special. He said this so matter-of-factly, like that was simply the irrefutable truth. He didn’t sound upset about it, like you can’t really be mad about the fact that one toe is longer than another. It was just who he was.

I sat there in disbelief, not even sure where to begin to explain to him the way he really was. How I saw him. How far from the truth he was. That he was one of the most captivating people I’ve ever met and there was this sort of magic about him that I’d never seen in anyone else. He couldn’t blend in if he tried. When I feebly tried to explain this, he chalked it up to not knowing him long enough. I wanted him to know that the more I knew him, the less ordinary he became.

This was the first of many similar conversations I’ve had with people here. Somehow this topic always got lost in the states with movies and school taking up so many of the conversations. I was talking with a group of people about what we didn’t like about ourselves and the things people were pulling out were so strange to me. These things that just simply weren’t true from a preoccupation with the size of your head to never feeling confident in anything that you do. This self loathing that seeped from everyone filled the room, killing the love that we were trying to send their way.

No one can claim that they see themselves the way that others do. So much of our time is spent trying to wonder what these things are that the other people might be saying and imagining the worst. It’s true that the haters are going to hate, but more than likely, people are loving something about you that you missed.

Not caring what others think is something that was always associated with strength, and in many ways this isn’t a bad life philosophy. But in our haste to disregard what others think, you run the risk of never seeing something in you that shines so brightly it blinds other people. This strength, this thing that you miss could be so life-altering, could be the thing you always needed to hear, that refusing to listen could be detrimental to your life.

I was explaining my relationship with my mom to someone earlier today and I was telling him how stressful it was sometimes, because she honestly believes there’s nothing that I can’t do. I used to write it off as it being part of her job, one of those things they teach you in parent school. But as I’ve grown up, she’s been my biggest fan, and it’s gotten more and more real, this unwavering faith she has in me that my life will be extraordinary. I hate to tell her that this isn’t true, that my limitations are so real they drag me down to a point that I can never see myself rising up from them. In this scenario, who has the better deal?

How much would your life change if just for one day, you believed what everyone told you about yourself? (The positive stuff, screw the haters.) What could you accomplish if the things you hold yourself down with, you gave to someone who really sees them 20/20?

Let people see you. More importantly, let them love you. One of the many wonderful teachers that you meet in books once said “We accept the love we think we deserve.” Let yourself be loved. Just for once, let someone that loves you to the moon and back explain why. Ask them what they see. Everyone has this unspeakable beauty in them.

Let it speak.

 

“Butterflies can’t see their wings. They can’t see how beautiful they are, but everyone else can. People are like that.”