Embody Real BeautySHANNON IRIS

I love imperfection.  I always have.  I am at home with it.  It is so much easier for me to see human beauty through the doorway of imperfection because it sets me at ease,  relaxes my mind and cools my expectations.

Imperfections are endearing – potentially enchanting, they have the capacity to stir nostalgia, empathy, and curiosity.  Imperfections create unique individuals… twitches, crooked smile, unibrows and all.

In the face of imperfection, I get to be an equal.  In the face of imperfection, I get a swing at being beautiful myself.

I have always been forthright about my imperfections.  I openly expose my weaknesses.   I’m not sure how this tradition started in my life but I know the value and I know the cost.  People are at ease around me.  I have the opportunity to see a great deal of beauty in others.  However, I have paid a price – without the same value for imperfection, I fear I do not rank very high on the cultural beauty ladder.

Our culture sells perfection as the only acceptable image of beauty.  Perfection is static.  It seems the acceptable practice is to substitute a lack of physical perfection with a totally stoic, rigid and static personality.    Cultural norms condone it.  It has become enough to stick that nose, warts and all,  high with an air of infallibility. What a shame.

In Beauty and the Soul,  Piero Ferrucci tells of the tale of the Japanese term wabi-sabi – which imparts “a particular aesthetic attitude, for which the poor, simple and imperfect is beautiful.  Wabi Sabi is also to do with looking for beauty where you usually wouldn’t think to find it, with the conviction that material poverty goes hand in hand with spiritual ritchness.”

That’s the way uh huh, uh huh – I like it – uh huh uh huh.

By the way, it is worth the price I pay to have access to the beauty of others.  Seek first to see beauty then to be seen as beautiful