Your Idea of “Real Beauty” will change forever after reading this

 

“He works out 6 times a day, he’s tall and muscular, with those breath-taking chiseled abs and ideal chin, his shoulders are broad, his arms are worth drooling over, and with that coiffed hair of his, he just looks AMAZZZZZZZZING!!!”, “She has the most beautiful pair of eyes I have ever seen”, “Did you just see how insanely gorgeous Emma Watson looked in Harry Potter?”

Yeah, those are some of the many ways we look for and define beauty in society.

Lately, it has all become about the physical appearance of we humans that we misinterpret to be the real beauty. But what actually is real beauty? 

Well, let’s get to it.

 

Physical Beauty is Temporary

It goes without saying but those perfect dimples are gonna transform into saggy bags, the spot-free face into a wrinkled playground, the 6 pack abs into a pot belly, the perfect chin into a double chin, the luscious black hair into white hair(or maybe even no hair), irrespective of how obsessed you are with your outer appearance.

So, don’t worry, all those Instagram models, your favorite actors, models you keep digging over aren’t gonna be able to keep up with all the shine and glitter for long.

Henceforth, for all of you who feel you are not ‘pretty enough’ for the standards of society, well screw them. It’s all temporary anyway. You don’t have to count yourself short, undermine your potential, depreciate your self-worth, or think less of you just because you don’t think you are beautiful enough.

Now, I am not bashing attractive faces or healthy bodies. It does feel warm to look at them, but that kind of beauty is a really superficial kind of beauty that will pretty soon bore you. In fact, sometimes, physical beauty only seems like beauty until they open their mouth. The second they utter a single word, the very same beauty you were attracted to becomes the biggest turn-off. Obviously, exceptions are always there. 

Physical beauty can only attract someone temporarily for a certain period of time and can make one excited about it. But no heart-to-heart connections can possibly be made solely by physical beauty. This kind of beauty is actually at the bottom-most spectrum of beauty standards but society has put physical beauty on a pedestal as if nothing else matters.

Also, I don’t intend to pass the message that you should stop taking care of your appearance. It’s also very important for you to take the utmost care of your body to keep your physical self in tip-top shape. I am not gonna elaborate on it because the topic is much more sophisticated than that.  

Your Insecurities are Sold

Giant cosmetic companies who have the sole motive to extract as much money as they can are simply ripping off their customers’ faith and pounding hard on their insecurities to sell their products that you think will make you ‘beautiful’. 

And it is this very misconception of yours that they are taking full-blown advantage of. Right from the start of the day till the sun goes down, you are directly or indirectly made to feel that until and unless you get Kim Kardashian’s heinie or Kylie Jenner’s nails or Chris Evans’ muscles, you are not pretty enough.

And if you are not pretty enough, nobody would like to be with you, you won’t be considered attractive enough and you would ultimately die a lonely and miserable life. That’s what they want you to believe, and why wouldn’t they?

Their Game Plan: Make you feel like shit-> Indirectly compare you with unrealistic standards of beauty-> Sell products that ‘promise’ to ‘fix-you’->Repeat

It surely is making them a ton of money.  If everyone can understand what real beauty is, which we will discuss in this article, then that’s not good for business. Happiness is not good for the economy in general.

So, it only makes it all the more important for we consumers to understand what actually is worth giving a shit about and what isn’t. Like I said before, I am not intending to say that you should stop getting dressed to look good on the outside or stop grooming yourself.

You don’t have to change anything on the outside, you just simply have to mend what’s going on inside. Once you do that, the rest will automatically take care of itself.

 

Is Confidence Real Beauty?

Ok, so now that we established that physical beauty can’t really determine the real beauty of a person, some people might have the perception that showing confidence and exuberating command in a situation is beauty.

Surely, it ups your personality metric when you portray yourself as someone who’s not timid or cowering in a small corner, but just being confident doesn’t reveal the true beauty of a person.

A person might be really confident about a couple of things in life, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the person is actually beautiful from the inside. Even a criminal or a terrorist is pretty confident of the shit they pull off, and they rarely succumb to the outside pressure.  

The basic point is, you can be confident about something good and positive and valuable, you can be confident about something bad and negative and unethical. Hence, as attractive and magnetic we might find ‘confidence’ to be, we gotta be careful before we instantly label it as real beauty. 

Someone might literally be using confidence as a mask to hide his real motives which may be wildly different from what he is portraying.

 

Is Real Beauty Temporary?

So far, the kind of beauties we have touched upon are the kinds that are temporary. An attractive face won’t be able to keep you mesmerized for long if that’s all they are bringing to the table, and a confident person won’t be able to keep you engrossed if his values are crooked and lack principles.

Real beauty, essentially is something that lasts long. It isn’t something you like today and hate tomorrow. 

Even personality can be faked and misapprehended by people. I mean literally, people can carve their personalities in a superficial manner in such a way that it looks, you know,  enticing and wanting to other people but deep down they’d be something totally different. 

For instance, there are so many public figures who showcase the kind of personality in public that is at times, totally different from what they actually are from the inside. Consequently, one can’t even claim personality to be the real standard for beauty.

The thing with falling for another person for the fake beauty is that the faster you fall for them, the faster you will “un-fall’’ as well. If you are just getting attracted to them for the money or the looks or the status or the personality or the reputation, chances are really high that as you get to know them more, you will realize they are not what you were actually looking for and that will only lead to disappointment, unfulfilled expectations, futile clashes, and unnecessary time waste.(Again, exceptions are always there.)

If only we could understand the real meaning of beauty, can we save ourselves a ton of time and mental energy.

Real Beauty Lasts Long

Real beauty is something that keeps you attracted and where there is no way possible to actually get ‘bored’ with it. It’s something where even if you want to you can’t really be separated from it.

Money can be lost, looks can fall flat, personalities can be appended, behaviors can change, traits can be modified, but the real beauty doesn’t go anywhere. 

Real beauty is developing the kind of understanding that facilitates communication without saying anything. Even words fall short where there is ‘real beauty’. And where there is this real beauty, there is love.

Now, there can be two approaches to go ahead with this. One is where you go and find such souls who match the definition of real beauty, where you are able to transcend the standards of physical beauty. The other way can be to become a source of beauty yourself.

Most people would keep on searching for that kind of beauty on the outside, but the only problem with that will be you becoming dependent on someone else. 

Let’s say, even if you find someone who fits your definition of real beauty, you will be relying on the other person for your happiness and peace. The better thing to do is to find that real beauty within ourselves.

 

And how can you radiate that lost beauty?

Well, it’s simple. By being happy. Not your dopamine-hit happy, but actually being happy from deep within, the kind of happiness that doesn’t change with moods, emotions, or feelings. Happiness is the pathway to exploring real beauty.

A person who’s happy from the inside and not just at the surface level can’t possibly think bad or do something bad to someone, at least not intentionally or repetitively. And as an inherently selfish species, you’d always want to be around people who are genuinely happy in life, because happiness is contagious. Simply being in such people’s aura will brighten up your mood and would make you forget your woes.

On the flip side, those who are miserable or frustrated from the inside—even though they pretend to be the happiest on the outside—are the kind of people who will suck out your energy irrespective of the amount of goody-two-shoes bullshit they spew out.

So, effectively, if you can be happy from deep within irrespective of what’s happening in the outside world, won’t you become a walking talking example of the real beauty I am blabbering about? Of course, you would be! 

 

How to be Happy?

That’s the obvious next question that must be popping off in your brains? Now, even though I have already talked about happiness at length here, here, here, here, and here, it’s one of those topics that I can’t keep my mouth shut about, so I figured I’d rant a couple of hundred words here as well.

People can become happy via two paths. The first one, which is the more common one, involves seeking external sources of happiness. You know like, watching your favorite movie, eating your favorite snack, hanging out with your favorite peeps, vacationing at your dream destination, using your favorite tool, taking revenge with your most resentful ex, and so forth. 

But the thing with these external sources is that, if you become dependent on them they can start exploiting and manipulating you or to put it simply, you would no longer be in control of your own life.

What if we discover something internally, the kind of source that never runs out and will never deceive us or manipulate us? That would be it, right? Our quest to experience that real beauty would come to an end if we could embrace that inner source of happiness.

The Internal source of Happiness

The best possible thing about the internal source of happiness is that this source of happiness is limitless and infinite. 

Every other external source comes with its own limitations. Your favorite movie can become boring, your favorite snack might bring in a couple of diseases with itself, your favorite people might change, your dream destination might bring about some bad experiences and in a general sense, the best of your experiences can pretty soon turn sour.

That’s not the case with the internal source, as you are the sole master of what goes on inside. Your internal source comes with no side effects or any kind of terms and conditions. It’s absolute and unconditional, but nobody really talks about it.

This internal source is nothing but your sight, your vision of how you see the world. If your sight is beautiful then everything around you becomes beautiful. 

A person with a beautiful vision would find beauty even in the shabbiest of places, and a person with a crooked-up vision would find faults even when he’s looking at the moon. 

A Beautiful vision would appreciate the mud or the shit in which a lotus blooms. A normal vision would appreciate the beauty of the lotus flower. While a limited vision would find faults even in the lotus flower.

The thing that makes a vision truly beautiful is its ability to see the thing that’s visible to everybody but acknowledged and appreciated by nobody. Just like the mire, in which a lotus blooms, is visible to everybody, but most of us focus on just the flower, and not the thing that’s supporting the flower’s growth.

To give a more humane example, everyone is smitten by the glittery and shiny aspects of success and accolades, but only the ones with a truly beautiful vision can appreciate the ugly aspects of success: the hardships, the unanticipated screwups, the costly mistakes, the sleepless nights, the tensed mind, the stressful stream of thoughts, the years of struggle.

It’s easy to appreciate results. It’s easier to appreciate heaven, but the true beauty lies in appreciating the hell one needs to go through to reach heaven.

 

Your Vision Needs to be Broad, to be Beautiful

A vision that’s wide is a vision that’s beautiful. A limited and short vision would only look at an incomplete part of a scenario and is the surest way to regress even the most beautiful of experiences into an ugly and forgetful memory. 

The examples I mentioned above clearly demarcate the difference between a limited vision and an abundant vision. The latter will always try to look at the silver lining, the learnings, the positives, while the former would stop its quest of finding beauty and jump to a conclusion the second it finds a smidgen of negativity or something unanticipated happening.

If you get fired from your job, then real beauty isn’t in shrinking your vision and instantly cursing your luck, fate, or your grumpy boss, the real beauty lies in expanding your vision and trying to see what the particular event wants you to learn.   

You cannot extract happiness if your vision is short and limited, and as we discussed previously, you cannot truly exuberate true beauty if you are not happy from deep within. So, it’s kinda prerequisite for you to expand your horizons and think broader, wider, and deeper, and more importantly not judging anything instantly, to you know, eliminate the redundant misery from your life.

Anyone who operates and looks at the world with a limited, incomplete, and narrow vision will be super quick to label things and judge people, and such a person would never be able to fathom the real beauty.

Narrow Vision Leads to Self Obsession

Let’s take a person who has everything a common man aspires to have. Name, fame, money, you name it he has it all. But if that particular person can only think about himself and nothing but himself, then he’d again come under the radar of limited vision.

Such a guy isn’t any better than the other animals who also procreate, take care of their family, and protect themselves. Essentially, that guy may look all well and good in papers, but in reality, nobody would really like to be around someone who can only think of himself.

Now, as the vision gets wider and wider, and as one starts thinking about not just one’s own self, but also about others, his beauty level starts to increase. Because hey, everyone wants to be around someone who’s interested in them.

Just like you would always prefer open space in comparison to being trapped in a closed box, your thinking too demands no leashes or chains pulling it and restraining it. Evidently, the more self-centered you become, the more clogged your thoughts will get, and the harder it will be for you to actually be happy from the inside.

And like we discussed before, happiness is directly related to real beauty, so consequently, the more you force your thoughts to revolve around you and you alone, the less beautiful you will be. Nobody would be able to deeply connect with such a person as he’s actually miserable from the inside.

The more accepting you become, the more one pushes the boundaries of one’s thoughts, and the bigger you can think, the fewer conflicts you will have, leading to becoming happier and furthermore becoming more beautiful. And as a result, more people would like to be in touch with people who are happy and beautiful from the inside.   

It goes without saying, but you should strive to make your own vision beautiful instead of trying to connect with those who already have a beautiful one. Chances are that your own ugly sight will sucker punch someone else’s beauty too and you’d start seeing their beauty with your own crooked lens.

 

The more substantial thing to take care of

If I go one step further, what would be more crucial? To look good in front of others, or to make it so that everyone else looks good to you?

Take a moment and patiently think about it. 

Obviously, if you look good, people would appreciate it. But if you look closely, you looking good to others is beneficial for others, whereas everyone else looking good to you is beneficial for you. See the difference?

That’s the whole beauty game. You will never be able to satisfy others so why even bother excessively obsessing over your looks when you can always satisfy your own soul by changing how others look to you. Again, real beauty isn’t about trying to impress others by showing off your own superficial beauty, real beauty is about making others look good in your eyes.

 

Reality is Infinite

So far, we established the fact that we need to have a broader vision in life so as to have the kind of thoughts that keeps us happy in order to be beautiful. Now, the best way to apply this is to actually understand reality.

The reality of reality is that reality is infinite. It’s only at the level of our thoughts that we see it as a limited entity and overlook what we truly are. 

So buckle up boys and girls, it’s about to get a tad rocky ahead.

You are not the body you think you are. And I am not saying this from a mystical, spiritual, or some fluffy positive mindset. I am saying it from the perspective of truth.

If you think about it, isn’t the Universe like an ever-flowing river that doesn’t really ever stop? It might look like time has stopped sometimes, but it’s actually always flowing. And in this gigantic river, there are innumerable waves.

Some are small while some are big, some are so-called beautiful while some are so-called ugly, some are flowing slowly while some are flowing quickly. Now, I am trying to draw a parallel between waves and we humans, so pay close attention. 

In reality, no wave is either beautiful or ugly, it’s just a matter of perspective and conditioning. A pretty big lie is what it is. Because the truth is the same for everyone. 

So, if you keep considering yourself a wave and look at this giant river from the perspective of a teensy tiny wave, then you are gonna spend the rest of your life comparing yourself with others and living an unhappy and unfulfilled, and limited life. 

There are literally infinite waves and your whole life would just become a giant competition to win an illusionary race. Every wave is just trying to make itself bigger than ever by any means whatsoever, without giving two shits about anyone else. And since the wave already considers itself distinct from the river, it’s bound to live an unhappy life from within.

That’s not real beauty in any sense whatsoever.

 

You Are the Water

Seeing yourself through the lens of a wave is narrow vision, seeing yourself through the lens of the water is the vision you need to adapt. Ultimately, water is what’s real. Nobody can challenge the validity of water now, can he?

A wave is just a form of water. You can’t ever touch a wave, as what you will be touching will essentially be water only. It’s actually stupid for a wave to call itself wave as it’s changing every second. Look at your childhood photos and compare them with your present self.

You are a totally different person now. The wave keeps on changing, the water is what stays as it is. And the real beauty is something that doesn’t change with time, something that’s eternal.

Living your entire life considering yourself a wave is exactly the kind of thinking you need to live a miserable and ugly life while living your entire life considering that you are actually the water is exactly the kind of thinking you need to live a happy and beautiful life.

The waves are limited, and the water is unlimited. And what’s unlimited is the real beauty. And in reality, we all are the water only which fundamentally makes us all beautiful but we malign this beauty at the level of our thoughts.

When you accept the fact that you are water, then there’s no way to separate yourself from this universe, or compete or compare yourself with others, or think ill of others, or do any one of the hundred and twelve other things that’d make us look bad. 

The Practicality of it

Having said that, it doesn’t mean that you stop thinking about yourself totally and surrender yourself to the world, that’d be stupid. The world will literally chew you up and spit you out in a heartbeat.

The intelligent way is for the wave to make itself valuable to contribute to the river and to ensure its place. You gotta reach a particular level first in order to survive and possibly thrive later on in life.

But the thing that the majority of people miss out on is that they keep on doing the same thing even after reaching that particular level. It’s true that you need to be strong in every aspect of your life to ensure your survival, but being strong doesn’t mean just thinking about yourself till eternity and not giving a rat’s ass to others.

The real strength isn’t in just making oneself stronger, it’s actually in helping make everyone around you stronger. Exploiting the weak or pushing others down to climb up isn’t being strong, it’s actually being a coward.

And at the same time, you are not stupid or weak enough to let anyone else get the better of you. Also, you don’t hold back to stop someone from doing something you know is wrong or unethical.  

 

 

When you see the fact that we don’t have to be connected with each other, we already are connected, then that’s what Real Beauty is all about.