When Nobody is looking
As little girls, others are always commenting on our looks. “Isn’t Suzy so pretty?” “Doesn’t Cathy’s dress look nice?”. Boys on the other hand are recognized for what they can do. “Wow Bobby you are so strong, what a fast runner you are”. It’s no one’s fault really, it's the way that society has programed us. Kasia Urbaniak talks about this phenomenon in her book Unbound which I highly recommend.
When I was about 23 years old, I had this idea that once I turned 30 no man would want me anymore and my value and worth would just evaporate and I would expire. I turn 40 this year and now realize how silly that is, but at the time it made me feel like I had a real crisis on my hands.
I went to go visit my grandmother who at the time was in her 80’s. She spent the majority of her life as the most beautiful woman in the room, a true head turner. I decided to ask her a really difficult question, the kind of question where you really don’t know how on earth it could possibly land well.
“Grandma, you have always been a very beautiful woman… I wanted to ask you, how did it feel when you got to the age when every head in the room no longer turned when you walked in?“
To my horror she shrugged her shoulders and said “oh, honey I don’t know”. If she had a pearl of wisdom on the subject she wasn’t going to give it to me. I was going to have to do a deep dive into my very soul and answer the question myself.
In my family, everyone has held tightly to their youthful vanity well into their 60’s. Both of my parents are no stranger to the nip and the tuck. Youth and beauty has always been the unspoken golden key to a happy life. It was clear to me however that this tight hold on a flawless reflection is and will always be a battle we were born to lose.
If we place our value in something so fleeting we are setting ourselves up for a life not well lived, a life of true personal heartbreak. If we cannot love ourselves after our youth and beauty fades how can we possibly accept the love of another? One becomes bitter, the face hardens and you are then destined for true loneliness.
I made a (quite obvious) observation in the disparity between men and women and how we view aging and beauty. There are women who purchase expensive face creams, endure painful fad diets and attempt to slice ten years off of their faces at the local plastic surgeon’s office and there are men who (the vast majority) do not. Why is this? It is because men are more often recognized for what they accomplish, rather than what they look like? (There are some snafus in placing ones value in accomplishments as well, but more on that later)
I started to try and switch gears in my head. What if I placed my value in what I created, what I became? What if my power lived somewhere else? I’d take a swing at realigning my person self worth. Easier said than done.
The Betty Hutton song Anything you can do I can do better, started playing my head. I started picking up every license and certification I could think of in an effort to be recognized for having outward value. I earned my real estate license, I joined the Scutzhund club and began training police dogs. I became a USCG captain and started ground school to get my private pilots license. The list goes on… I then bought a sailboat and started a quest to take it around the world. I was doing it…but something was missing.
One day as I sat in a beautiful far flung anchorage on my really cool pirate ship with my beautiful children and badass German shepherd I realized something. Despite checking off all of these boxes to be as outwardly accomplished as “Tommy”, something didn’t feel right.
Someone once told me that we need to forgive ourselves for anything we do before we turn 40. I didn’t really understand what this meant … drumroll … until I reached 40. At the (most likely) half way mark of our lives, there is what some people experience as a crisis. A question. What have I done in this life… to make this world or the people around me better. What did I do to help? What was my value here?
BAM!! That was the answer to my question.
My grandmother was a pre school and piano teacher well into her 80’s. She was always selflessly giving back, that is were her value lived. Her happiness and self worth lived within the positive change she made in the world.
The accomplishments that make us truly whole are the ones that are in service to others. It was never about how beautiful we were, or how many boxes we checked off on our ascension to greatness, recognition or power.
To let go of the desire and the need to be seen as beautiful and sexy is hard pill to swallow for some of us (me). However, if we don’t we are setting ourselves up for failure. I have begun to (try to) make a shift in the way I look at my body and my beauty.
So here it goes… My body is this amazing machine, like a space suite that if properly cared for and maintained has a number of healthy miles that I am able to put on it. If I take care of it, it is possible to watch 31046 sunrises and sunsets, maybe even 36525 (that’s 100 years) . I could give the gift of listening in a world where people are not truly heard. I could let someone know the true meaning of unconditional love. The possibilities are endless.
The changes positive we make in the world no matter how small or how grand is where our happiness lives. Beauty is a state of being, it’s a vibe right? We are at our highest vibration when we are doing what we love and sending that love right out there into the world.
