The Real You
One woman describes herself as "Five feet, three inches tall and
pleasingly plump." After she had a minor accident, her mother
accompanied her to the hospital emergency room. The admitting nurse
asked for her height and weight, and she blurted out, "Five-foot-
eight, 125 pounds."
The nurse pondered over this information and looked over the patient.
Then the woman's mother leaned over to her and gently chided,
"Sweetheart, this is not the Internet."
If you could change your appearance in life as easily as you can make
one up on the Internet, would you remake yourself? It's tempting to
think so. We live in an age when most of us are increasingly
dissatisfied with our bodies. We want liposuction, face lifts, tummy
tucks, silicon implants and cosmetic surgery - too often for no other
reason than to look like someone else!
And don't think I am only talking about women. Men too place great
emphasis on their bodies. Studies show that in 1972, one in six men
didn't like their appearance; today, almost 50% of men surveyed
reported being unhappy with their looks.
Of course, our bodies keep changing. I have less hair on top than
twenty years ago. An older man who happens to be bald looked at my
head recently and said, "It looks like you go to the same barber as I
do."
According to the book THE ADONIS COMPLEX (The Free Press, 2000), more
and more men are feeling insecure about their appearance. In 1996,
over 700,000 men had some cosmetic surgery - often in an unhealthy
attempt to fix a perceived flaw that nobody else noticed. Eating
disorders and steroid abuse are common among males.
The book's authors Harrison Pope, Katharine Phillips, and Robert
Olivardia did an experiment in which men were asked to take a
computer image of an ordinary man and add muscle mass to him until he
was the size these men wanted to be. On average, the men packed about
28 more pounds of muscle mass on the computer image; women, on the
other hand, only added a negligible amount of muscles to the image to
create their ideal guy.
Poet Khalil Gibran said, "Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light
in the heart." When you and I choose to believe that our most
attractive qualities lie within, we can let go of those unrealistic
expectations of our bodies.
Let's care for our bodies; we'll keep them for the rest of our lives.
Let's be thankful for them and treat them well.
But remember, the real you, the essence of you, cannot be improved by
a bottle or a pill or a salon. It is a beautiful and glorious light
shining from your heart to the heart of the world. Cherish the real
you - it's pretty terrific. And let it shine.
~ Steve Goodier ~
[ by: Steve Goodier Copyright © 2008 (LifeSupport@yahoogroups.com) -- {used with permission} ]
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