Truly Beautiful

I’m learning about what truly makes a person beautiful

I think I’ve often looked for beauty in the unique and conspicuous parts of people’s character, body, or dress — the things that stand out. Being honest, that’s probably also where I’ve looked for lack of beauty.

I suppose those are superficial judgments though…

I try to look for beauty another way. Some quotes might help… Elder Holland talked about it this way:

I suppose no one is as handsome or as beautiful as he or she wishes, or as brilliant in school or as witty in speech or as wealthy as we would like, but in a world of varied talents and fortunes that we can’t always command, I think that makes even more attractive the qualities we can command—such qualities as thoughtfulness, patience, a kind word, and true delight in the accomplishment of another. These cost us nothing, and they can mean everything to the one who receives them.

How do I love thee?

Almost 100 years earlier, President Joseph F. Smith said something similar:

Those things which we call extraordinary, remarkable, or unusual may make history, but they do not make real life. After all, to do well those things which God ordained to be the common lot of all mankind, is the truest greatness.

Juvenile Instructor, 15 Dec. 1905, p. 752

Beauty, like greatness, is actually in the common things…

…Because the common things are within everyone’s reach, but few people actually attain them. That’s why they’re so amazing :) They represent honest efforts towards goodness.

And sometimes it seems like people with the worst chance of developing this kind of beauty actually do the best at it… people born or thrown into trial and difficulty.

But then, maybe it’s the difficult experiences that facilitate growth? And I guess that adds even more to beauty because it represents strength of character — to choose to become humbled and molded through difficulties rather than hardened and cynical.

How about true happiness?

One more quote to finish… on how the common and simple things in true beauty and greatness are also the key to true happiness.

Changing the world is good for those who want their names in books. But being happy, that is for those who write their names in the lives of others, and hold the hearts of others as the treasure most dear.

Orson Scott Card, Children of the Mind

My recent HWN has been looking for greatness in others around me :)

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p.s. I was in a band for my friend’s birthday last weekend! Check out a photo album — with a couple videos of songs I was in as well :) (some friends picked out my outfit for me ;)

p.p.s. I also got to spend a couple hours with my friend Josef from Norway :) He was in town for a wedding, and I hadn’t seen him for several years.