A note on self-esteem

I was in the office restroom, washing my hands and fixing my hair and inspecting my concealer's concealing power. In my mind I looked very unattractive; my hair was not cooperating and my skin was red and blemished. At the sink next to me stood a young woman -- probably a client of one of the lawyers, or just a visitor -- who was a vision of beauty. She was tall, with ivory skin, straight black hair to her waist, blue eyes, a slender yet curvy hourglass figure with muscle. Her lips were full. Her cheekbones were high.
I glanced at her in the mirror and decided I was nothing in comparison.
And then she looked at me and said I looked beautiful.
She said I looked exotic; she asked what my heritage was.
I was so taken aback that I blurted out my thoughts, that I thought she was lovelier than me, and that I was experiencing horribly low self-esteem. She giggled and admitted that she'd been staring at herself wishing she were different; shorter, not so pale, longer fingers, bigger eyes, straighter teeth. She asked what kind of concealer I used because she had a few pimples under what I thought was flawless makeup. She wished she had my kind of looks.
And I realized, belatedly, that she thought I was prettier than she was.
And then I realized that nobody is perfect.
Everyone thinks that everyone else is prettier.
And everyone is beautiful because there are so many kinds of beauty.
When I walked out of the bathroom, I was smiling and holding my head high.

beautiful illusions

To expand on my previous post:
The real, sad secret of a cover girl
Voila.
I shall never look at a magazine ad, billboard, or poster of a model in the same way again. The video is startling, brutally honest, and disappointing... but it delivers an intense message: Beauty, true beauty, is who we are, not who we are made to be.

thoughts

I just learned that there is a quote out there, from a Rabbi:
"Hatred is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die."

When I say, "I hate this or that or him or her," I don't mean it, because to me, hate has intense power. Hate gives power. When you hate something, you allow it to control you, to an extent.
In the Starbucks near my work, I overheard a man ranting and raving about President Bush and the current administration, using the word hate as much as he could. And I just smiled and shook my head and drank my coffee. You can hate someone or something all you want, hate until your heart turns black and burns and crumbles to dust. You can hate until it fills your blood and makes you sick, physically sick, breaking down your immune system, making you depressed and bitter and angry at everything. Little things every day all day will make you hurt more and more. You can't walk without pain, breathe without pain, think without pain. And eventually, you forget why you are so angry and hurting. All you have is your hate. Hate is passion, just like love. Passion hurts. Passion bleeds. Passion in love can make the world incredibly beautiful. Passion in hate can make the world violently ugly.

I prefer to say, "I really don't like that" or "this makes me so angry I can't see straight." I can calm down after I say those things, even though I may not be able to forget or forgive.
If I say that I hate something, I want to mean it. Otherwise it has no meaning to me other than a word.