More than a Pretty Face.

Hello, dear reader. I hope your Monday was good and now you're ready to be comfortable and enjoy this post.

So, yesterday night was a Supermoon and it was beautiful! I spent the night sitting on a beach marveling at the beauty of the moon. It was breathtaking. The beauty of the moon never ceases to amaze me.

I have always been fascinated with the night, the stars and the moon. The amount of beauty that the night brings with it is boundless and I can never get enough of it.

As I sat there and enjoyed the view in front of me I couldn't help but stare at the moon; I was spellbound. I wondered if the moon knew how beautiful it was. How many people have been taking pictures of it, trying to capture its true beauty but, as always, have unwillingly failed. How many people have written quotes about the moon and its mesmerizing beauty?

Then it got me thinking if the moon even care about its beauty? Is that what it wanted - the fame? Did it want to be known for its beauty or did it want to known for something else?

The sun, on the other hand,  is known for giving life, being bright, and helping to sustain living things. We don't reduce the sun down to a beautiful object, instead we highlight its other qualities and appreciate them all. As humans, we understand that the sun is essential for our existence, but the moon is not like that. The moon is all about the looks and not the substance behind it.

Hence the quote.

So then it got me wondering if that's what the world has boiled down to: the looks and not the substance. It's all about the amount of likes on Facebook and Instagram; how many retweets you get on Twitter, and how many followers you have. It's not about the substance, its all about popularity and the fandom.

Isn't it?

We reduce people to who we think they are by the way they look, don't we dear reader? I reduced the moon to a pretty object and ignored its other qualities. We do the same with people everyday; we focus on what we see on the surface and we make that surface a reality.

Our society functions solely against the saying, "Never judge a book by its cover." We always judge the book by its cover and not only that, we spread the judgement amongst ourselves, convincing one another that this judgement is in fact the reality.

We need to change that.

When we see a chubby person we think of them as someone who eats unhealthy and doesn't exercise. That is just your perception - you don't know the story behind the looks. What if that person has a medial condition that promotes weight gain? What if all that person eats is 2 measly carrots all day and still can't lose the weight because of a medication's side effect? You don't know because you didn't bother finding out. You based your analysis merely on looks.

And its not just you, dear reader. It's also your neighbour, your friend, me, and most importantly, it's our society. It has become the norm: judgement based on looks. There are advertisements out there that focus on all of your physical attributes: eyes, lips, face, teeth, body, etc. The media presents you with numerous options that will allow you to make yourself "beautiful."

This kind of thinking needs to be stopped. Why?

Because this approach is not humane. Being a human is more about the emotional than about the physical. Do not reduce yourself to an object, dear reader, an object who is constantly bettering his/herself just so he/she is more appealing to others. That is a short-cut.

You need to put the work in your personality, talk to people, become someone, do community service, help a stranger and be confident. These are the attributes that you should be known for. You should be more than just a pretty face.

I want to make that change, dear reader. I want to stop the process of judgement based on looks. I want to wait for the person to speak, to act, to show me who they are and then draw my conclusion.

Maybe the moon isn't all about the beauty and maybe it wants to be more than a pretty face, but it cannot do that unless we give it a chance to prove otherwise. Whether it wants to be judged based on its appearance or its qualities, it's the moon's choice, dear reader - not ours.

Until next time, smiles up and doubts down.

isheeza