What is beauty to you ? Is it in a face or a flower or the scenery around you? Is it the eyes of your loved one? The face of a newborn child? The amount of your balance in your stock portfolio?
How do you interpret it? Is it the outside or the inside?
Here in paradise I find beauty everyday but I don't always appreciate it when it is always in front of me. Many times when I am feeling blue, I look around and nothing is beautiful to me. My eyes are blinded by my emotions. Yet the beauty is still there whether I perceive it or not. Though I am oblivious everyone else still sees. It is in the eyes of the Beholder.
I was once a beautiful woman. I know this because people told me so. They told me enough times that I believed them and used it to my advantage whenever I could. As I aged, less people told me I was beautiful. Those that love me continue to tell me I am beautiful, but strangers do not tell me anymore. This really bothered me. I began buying cremes and potions and took pills and tried all different exercises to make myself as beautiful as I once was. I thought I was losing my power, my ego, myself! I was shocked when I looked in a mirror and did not recognize myself anymore. Who is this wrinkled, sagging person?
In my dreams I am always young and beautiful. No matter how terrible the dream, I am young and beautiful. Sometimes I wake up thinking I still look that way and when I catch my reflection I am surprised again. Why doesn't my mind understand that my body will change? Why is it so important to me to stay beautiful. Are all women like this or am I so egotistical and insecure that it is a personal problem?
Ah, but there must be a lot of women who feel this way or there would not be so many ways to try and stop the aging process available to us to buy.
In Paradise, the people born and raised here seem to have a different approach to aging. It seems to be embraced rather than defied. The older people are revered for their knowledge and are taken care of by their families. The women continue to dress nicely and and age appropriately and still put up their hair, but I don't see them going to the extremes that the women (me included) in my homeland do.
In my homeland I see women in their 60's wearing clothing that should be worn by girls in their 20's. It is embarrassing. Yet, I find myself heading towards the shops where I have bought my clothes since I was in my 20's and have to remind myself that there is nothing there for me anymore. As I pass the windows I keep thinking, " Oh that would look so good on me!" The truth is I would look terrible in that kind of clothing now! Why can't I turn that part of me off? Why do I continue to think of my self as a young woman?
I don't think I could do the surgery for a face lift or a rear end lift but I think about it. I am too much of a wimp to get myself cut open unless it was medically necessary. Yet I still think about it.
Since I have aged, has my life really changed? I can still run (though not as fast or far and now my knees ache when I do), I can still ride horses ( though not as long a ride nor as wild a horse and I ache sometimes), I can still dance(though not many men ask me to anymore and I uncomfortable dancing alone in public as I still dance like I did when I was young and it seems wrong somehow so now I dance by myself in my house or under the full moon outside), I can still do most of the physical activities that I always did, in a modified format. Maybe that is why I never picture my self looking old. I live my life much the same way as I always have.
I am very lucky to have a man that has loved me since I was very young and still loves me today. The Husband claims that this is possible because we are aging together so the changes are so gradual as not to be noticed by either of us. It must be true because when I think of him, I don't think of him the way he looks now I think of him the way he looked when we met. I also see him that way when I look at him now. That sounds very trite and in this time of the world almost impossible but I think we were born just before all the romance went out of the world. If you look at the true meaning of romance, it means having imagination and and sentimentality. I cannot imagine being introduced as "This is ma bitch!" Although we were a part of the "This is my old lady"era, I was lucky enough to pick a man who thought those words were ugly. It is also an explanation or an excuse maybe, for the way I see myself! If he is still young in my eyes, so must I still be young in his. There is another man in my life that tells me I am beautiful all the time and that man is my Father. Though maybe this does not count because all father's think their daughters are beautiful. I guess my Son does not count either. All in all, I am lucky to have all these men around that still tell me I am beautiful. There are many women who don't have that kind of love in their lives. I just realized that I am more concerned about how the men in the world and particularly those in my life see me and have not mentioned the women! Very interesting. I don't want to deal with that in this blog. A future one maybe. Hmm.......
Somehow I have found myself finally coming around to accept my aging. I don't know when it happened. I still use creams and potions for the fun of buying them, the pretty bottles and boxes they come in and the way they make my skin feel soft. I accept that I have had my time of youth and beauty. I accept that the Husband's love and affection and his admiration of whatever beauty I have is enough for me. Whom else should I be beautiful to? I accept that I have a long wonderful time ahead of me and that it will no longer have to be based on how 'Beautiful' I need to be to feel in power or control of my life. It is no longer how beautiful I look but how wonderful I feel, how much longer I can live and what more I can experience. Will I let myself get fat or stop taking care of my skin and hair? NO! However, I accept who I am and what I look like now and I will no longer compare myself to how I used to be. It is in the eyes of the Beholder!
Beauty is also about your surroundings. I like winter, not when drags on past the time it should be gone and the tulips should be blooming but I do like snow and the cold weather that makes you wear big sweaters and build fires and drink hot drinks.
I like trudging through snow and hearing the crunching underfoot while listening to the crackling of the ice on branches being moved around by the wind. I like seeing my breath and feeling my face get cold and turn red. I like the stillness that comes in long cold winter nights.
Many people hate winter and that is why I only get to spend a little time in it. I make the compromise for the Husband who is a winter hater. The compromise is not hard for me because I get to come to Paradise when I have to leave the winter. He thinks winter is only beautiful the first fluffy snow fall. He hates the in between fall and winter days, the leafless trees, the brown lawns, the gray mornings. He hates the ice and the deep dark cold of winter. I see the beauty in all of it, I like the change. It's always in the eyes of the Beholder.
I look at old run down houses out in the country on abandoned farms and imagine them to be like old photographs that age and yellow. I see the beauty that was and imagine the lives spent living in it. Some people call them eyesores. It is in the eyes of the Beholder.
Look at some of the most kind, smart, or artistic people in the world. How many of them are beautiful? Humphrey Bogart. Even his name is ugly but Lauren Bacall fell in love with him and he was beautiful to her which made him beautiful to us. Cleopatra was not considered a beautiful woman but Caesar and Mark Anthony lost their hearts and their powerful positions in Rome because of their love for her and made her and the icon of the beautiful seductiveness of women. Eleanor Roosevelt cared for the world and tried to make life better for many people and was loved by thousands of people. It is in the eyes of the Beholder.
I love to look at beauty wherever I find it. It is what 'I' perceive that is beautiful. Not what someone else sees. It is how you feel, see and touch the world that brings beauty to your eyes, the eyes of the Beholder.
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