Beautiful Is Not The Best Thing You Can Be

By

I don’t wear makeup.

I don’t go to the gym and sweat myself out for a killer body. I didn’t win the genetic lottery. I don’t have perfect skin or a small nose. I don’t have long lashes or pinkish, full lips. I don’t have an ideal height or weight. I don’t have perfect teeth, my eyes aren’t even symmetrical.

I might not meet up the beauty standard ever — no matter what I do. My parents might be the only people who ever tell me that I am pretty and believe it. This is okay. My life isn’t about trying to be a kind of beautiful that falls into a very specific, physical standard. 

My life is about being the friend people run to for comfort and support after a long day. My life is about remembering what matters; learning about the people who I love, making them happy. My life is about living up to my full potential, and realizing everything I’m capable of. It’s being kind. It’s feeling. It’s being beautiful for what I do, not how I appear. And that is what I want to be remembered as — that is the standard I want to live up to. How kind I was. How wholly myself I was. Beauty fades, but kindness and trueness doesn’t. Kindness remains always.

My life is about debating religion and philosophy. About being able to talk about anything, to anyone. Beauty fades, but the mind is timeless.

My life is about being able to touch someone else’s soul. About being strong and independent and there for the people who need someone. About being the stranger who restores someone’s faith in humanity, even just once, even just a little bit. Who helps a lost tourist, who sits with a lost boy in the mall while waiting for his mom to pick him up from the information center. About paying for someone’s food when someone forgets their wallet.

I want my existence to mean something to someone else too. I don’t want to be left with nothing but a shallow grave as a memoir of all I could have been.

I want more than a pretty face to prove that I was here. I want to leave something that permeates the surface. Beautiful is not the best thing you can be.