He Who Marries Beauty Marries Trouble

Ever since I announced that my anonymity will be coming to an end soon, I have been under immense pressure to be beautiful. I don’t know any other time that I’ve felt so not-beautiful-enough. And what makes it worse is that I don’t know what to do to make myself more beautiful. Yet, everyday, I receive at least one warning to be beautiful.

I get comments like, “You better be beautiful oh!” or “This one that you’ve hidden yourself for so long, you better not be ugly!” While I consider these to be threats and warnings, they are still not as bad as the other comment: I know you’re beautiful. See, when a person warns me to be beautiful, it is just that – a warning. At the end of the day, I can only hope to be as beautiful as what they would consider beautiful. But when a person says, “I know you’re beautiful,” that means they already have very high expectations. And yet, I do not know what these high expectations are. I mean, how do I quantify or measure beauty from the eyes of this beholder (who is yet to behold me)? If I dare to fall short of their expectation, I fear to think of what their reaction would be.

In light of that, I have gone through the trouble of getting some beauty-related quotes to convince you that beauty isn’t all its cracked up to be (Hey, that should be a quote!):

1.  “Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.” ~ Author Unknown.

2.  “Our hearts are drunk with a beauty our eyes could never see.” ~ George W. Russell.

3.  “Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.” ~ Kahlil Gibran.

4.  “That which is striking and beautiful is not always good, but that which is good is always beautiful.” ~ Ninon de L’Enclos.

5.  “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” ~ Err, I’ve just always heard it everywhere.

6. “It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.” ~ Leo Tolstoy.

7.  “Beauty comes as much from the mind as from the eye.” ~ Grey Livingston.

8.  “Beauty has a lot to do with character.” ~ Kevyn Aucoin.

9. “Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.” ~ Petrarch.

And my personal favorite …

10.  “He who marries beauty, marries trouble.” – Igbo proverb.

Whenever you begin to have the feeling that I should be very beautiful, please read these quotes from top to bottom. Understand them. Digest them. Commit them to memory. If symptoms of thinking I should be extremely beautiful persist, then please, read these quotes again. For as long as you feel that way, continue to read and recite these quotes.

However, if it so happens that I put my pictures up and you find me to be ravishingly, dangerously, unnaturally, ferociously, uncommonly, and irresistibly beautiful, then please, disregard these quotes and focus instead on these ones:

1.  “Beauty saves. Beauty heals. Beauty motivates. Beauty unites. Beauty returns us to our origins, and here lies the ultimate act of saving, of healing, of overcoming dualism.” ~ Mattew Fox

2.  “Beauty is variable, ugliness is constant.” ~ Douglas Horton.

And my favorite ….

3.  “Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.” ~ Ambrose Bierce.

On that note, I do hope you find me staggeringly, mercilessly beautiful.