tend to obsess about our personal beauty. However:
The quality that we call beauty ... must always grow from the realities of life. Our ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms, presently came to discover beauty in shadows, ultimately to guide shadows toward beauty's ends. Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty.
We tend to forget that it is the reality of our past - painful, hurting, mad, bad, horrible....and present - painful, hurting, mad, bad, horrible, that etches itself on our faces. We don't need to hide it under layers of make up. We don't need to rationalize it in our speech. We don't need to pretend it never happened or is not happening. We don't need to resort to the knife or medical therapies to erase the patterns our past and present have created/are creating on our faces and bodies. We need to accept that our past and our present is our reality - our very own reality.......and......we move on. When we accept the reality of our past and our present, the lines and blemishes become beautiful. When we don't accept it, they look ugly even as our soul in not accepting our past and present realities is ever uneasy and fretful and unhappy and black.
Without steeping/pickling ourselves in the past, or stewing in our present, we have to realize that it is the shadows and the darkenesses that have etched/are etching our souls that find reflection in our faces.
Let's toast ourselves: 'To me'!!!! Cheers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!