HUMILITY MONTH: DAY 4: “Alas! in the clothes of the greatest potentate, what is there but a man?”― Robert Louis Stevenson
So many of us are all about looking good. We spend billions and billions of dollars to look differently, and presumably, better than we believe we do without all the cosmetics, hair products, clothing and shoes, surgical interventions, painting, plumping, un-plumping, whatever is being done.
There is a certain amount of physical exercise that is healthy for each human body, along with a good diet that actually feeds our bodies. But the restrictive dieting of many in our culture in order to look a certain way is just as dysfunctional as the millions of people who have access to healthy foods and are still eating themselves to death with the wrong ones.
Ego, Ego, Ego. We all know the dance. It drives the addiction to substances, but more importantly, it drives us to want to shift our appearance in the attempt to win some kind of imaginary acclaim or recognition that we believe is waiting for us if we look a certain way.
Again, it is the BELIEF that we can be or feel or become something or someone different if only _______ …whatever we put into that space that is not of us or in us.
If there is something out there that we need in order to become a better ME, then it becomes an addiction, because we are terrified to live without it. We believe we cannot be loved without a specific hair color or a certain shade of eyeliner or a new outfit or if we gain or lose 10 pounds. Some people are so obsessed with this that they cannot leave their homes without adorning themselves in the magical cloak of that _____ or many other blanks.
We teach our children about this. It is the source of horrible beliefs about our bodies, our very selves. We learned this! Just as we are taught to be prejudiced, we are taught to not love who we are…as we are. And we perpetuate this in everything we do as consumers, as a culture.
What if we just learn to genuinely love and accept ourselves for who and what we are, what we come to the table with, and stop revering someone because they “appear” in a way that we believe we don’t? We can begin to foster true acceptance and stronger self-love in our children and the world around us. This is truly how we begin to stop discrimination and prejudice.
Dolphin Hug 