The society I grew up in traded in beauty for perfection a long time ago, and the consequences have been cataclysmic.

Beauty is about uniqueness:

a quality rarely found, or a combination rarely seen.

It requires connection. It’s in the moment.  It’s fleeting.  It is inherent in every living thing.

It is not something that is attained, it simply is. When the recognition touches you so deeply that it turns into a heart song, it becomes something beautiful.

The most basic principle of beauty is that it is elusive; it doesn’t last.  It’s a once-off.  You can’t capture it, you can’t hold onto it.  That’s what makes it valuable.  It’s the sunset that you treasure, it’s a moment, a look, a laugh.

Perfection is a perceived idea of what one ought to be, rather than what you are.  There is a disowning inherent in the basic principle of it.  It is a striving towards.  99% of the time it is utterly unobtainable.  It cannot be sustained. 

It requires looking outside of yourself – measuring your worth against someone or somebody else and in the process undermining your own inherent beauty.  It is not about appreciation, but about conforming to a set of beliefs that have been conceived outside of yourself.  It is about bending over backwards to be more like everybody else.

In the quest for perfection we have created a society where women now willingly butcher themselves in a desperate attempt to remain what they perceive to be perfect.  It is a dis-owning and desecration their own beauty, wisdom and well-earned age, and therefore of themselves.

I say:

Bring back the beauty!  Claim it and feel it!

It is there, in your bones. 

It sings its songs when you are not looking.