Beautiful

Remember that James Blunt song, "Beautiful"? Made all the girls swoon?

Well, not me. But I've always had an ambivalent relationship with the word.

As much as I hungered in my youth to hear that I was beautiful, I never inspired that kind of poetry from men. One boyfriend once remarked to someone else that I had beautiful eyes, and another one tossed, "Hey, you look beautiful tonight" as he bolted out the door, late for work, but no man has ever described me as beautiful while looking me in the eyes (like he meant it).

I do get a lot of "cute" though.

But don't start thinking I'm fishing for comments - plenty of people call me "beautiful" and mean it, i.e. my friends. And they offer it spontaneously, genuinely, while looking me in the eyes (like they mean it). Recently, one of my fellow yogis (who is quite possibly one of the most naturally beautiful women I've ever met) even described me as having a "beautiful Portuguese baker's face". Je suis émue.

We are all accustomed to thinking that certain emotions are only meaningful when they come from a significant other. That we are not really beautiful or special until a beloved arrives to make us feel as much. But the truth is, there is love around us all the time and that feeling of "being special" is always there - if only we can stop complaining long enough to see it.

Whether any man will ever find me beautiful (and mean it) is entirely conjectural, but I am daily surrounded by loving people who think the world of me. As long as I have their love, I think I'll be okay.

That being said, don't forget to remind someone of how beautiful they are - you have no idea how it may touch them.