You are so beautiful to me, can’t you see; You’re everything I hoped for, everything I need – You are so beautiful to me…
Imagine if we all grew up hearing that song sung to us…
– J.B. Priestly
She was not pretty, but she might have been handsome if somebody had kept telling her that she was pretty.
In a recent movie, Johnny Depp was convinced he was Don Juan… he told Marlon Brando, his therapist, that the reason he was so attractive to women was — because he saw into the inner beauty of all women and in his seeing that, they saw it in themselves and actually became beautiful.
The song: How could anyone ever tell you, you were anything less than beautiful– touches most people I know very deeply. Most of us haven’t had a lot of people in our lives telling us how beautiful we are… In fact, most of the messages we have gotten from our families, our Churches, our music, our media – tell us that we don’t quite measure up.
Last year, when choosing the quality of God to focus on – I chose Beauty. Or – I should say, BEAUTY chose me… because when I looked at the list, it jumped out at me and said – PICK ME — it’s time you worked on this…AND I DID…
Many of you have heard my story – but it bears repeating here — I grew up surrounded by all my Italian relatives – and my best friend – other than my sister, was my cousin, Terry who happened to be a redhead. Now, everywhere we went, people would stop and say to or about Terry – Isn’t she beautiful? I, standing next to her, was convinced that I must be chopped liver –( I never really wanted to say ugly). On the other hand, people would always say of me – she’s so smart… My cousin decided there and then that she must not be! – isn’t it amazing how we make assumptions from what we choose to hear?
Anyway – no little girl wants to be SMART…girls are supposed to be BEAUTIFUL – so, I spent a good deal of my life trying to PROVE that I wasn’t smart… That’s one of the reasons that I went and got 3 masters degrees and two doctorates! My cousin on the other hand, never went to college, convinced that she was destined to use her beauty instead of brains – she married 3x…I never did – didn’t think I was beautiful enough for anyone to want me…
One day, in graduate school, I was upset and crying about something – I can’t remember what – and the head of the Adult Education department at Columbia University came over and put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I can’t imagine why someone so smart and so beautiful could be so upset.” At that moment, I came to recognize that I had made smart and beautiful an EITHER/OR. It was as if he instantaneously wiped about years of pain.
Thank God, today, I can now look myself in the mirror and sing…. “You are so beautiful to me”… and in fact, I can’t help but look at all of you and say the same thing… FOCUSING on Beauty as a Quality of God has made an enormous difference for me — Whatever we focus on increases. I see Beauty in all people I meet – I see beauty in nature and even in the circumstances of life that I would have previously called CHALLENGES. There’s an exquisite BEAUTY in the way life is ordered. You see, whatever quality you focus on, you get to Focus on GOD instead of where you think there is a lack or limitation, and so you get to see Infinite Potential everywhere.
