Insane In The Vain: Chasing and focusing on the right beauty

As some people get older in life, they face a tremendous crossroads that sometimes keeps them hostage until the end of their days here on earth. They spend incredible amounts of dollars if they are able, and tremendous hours of time trying to slow down or even stop the one  thing that they have no control over...Time. They will constantly look for ways to hold onto youthful appearances, and dwindle bank accounts trying to Botox something, tuck something else, get rid of lines here, or grey there, and putting a lift on other things that age naturally withers, and takes away. Now I am not talking about someone who has had a surgery and desires to fix a scar, nor am I talking about the people who desire to enter a gym, and exercise, or even develop a lifestyle of eating right. Those things will obviously help with the internal aspects of youthfulness in the long run, and believe it or not, they have a hand in keeping the mind sharp and focused. What I am talking about is this obsessive chase for maintaining, or finding beauty in the vanity of ones self. Insane in the vain. People lose their minds when they have grey hair, when they have lines in their face or when they see their parents in the mirror in the morning. The problem is that the beauty that we all should really seek is not superficial within someone's face, or on the edge of some plastic surgeon's scalpel. The beauty that we should seek is within us and around us.

This world that particularly us Americans inhabit is so unforgiving. The personal demands upon each of us is taxing, and the peripheral distractions of life and everything takes its toll on not only our external features, but it also jades and erodes our inner gauge for perspective. Because of the demands of people upon us, and us upon other people, we sometimes develop a distorted view of just what beauty is, because we  are always not only dealing with things on some sort of superficial level, but we are told by media, and by other people just what beauty is represented by. Look at any billboard from the highway, or any advertisement that comes up on the internet, and some person who is supposed to be beautiful is selling a product, or idea, or concept that their own personal beauty is supposed to be the guideline and standard bearer for. Instead of what is being sold, or put forth, it becomes now a beautiful person. This is where people get screwed up, because they begin to think that the superficial beauty of themselves should be the focus of how they will gauge worth, and value. Aging becomes an issue when it shouldn't because if we are fortunate, we will all age. Some better than others physically, but that's not where true beauty lies, or where one should want to stop the appreciation.

Beauty is everywhere. It was here before all of us were born, and it will be here long after we are all dead and turned to dust. Beauty exists in every single aspect of nature..It exists in  architecture, it exists in the sky, and at your feet.It exists as sounds in the morning and evening in the form of birds, and Bullfrogs, and Crickets, and it exists in the mechanical human made world that we go about doing our business in daily. Missing this beauty is our biggest crime, because it is so easy to see, and it doesn't take that much effort to constantly immerse ones self in it.

 The importance of acknowledging, respecting and stopping to look at the beautiful existing things around means that you put yourself in perspective. Yes one likes to look as good as one looks, because it's not realistic for me to say that we should not have any vanity at all. But when you realize that beauty is all around you, you will not be obsessed with your own physical shortcomings or perceptions of those. You will not compete with other people for beauty, and to compete with nature is just futile. So in a sense it frees you to focus on the inner beauty that you and other people possess, because you then acknowledge that there is something much bigger than you. And your physical beauty by certain standards becomes fleeting, and unimportant. You will not be preoccupied with fighting father time with expenses, because you will be too busy reveling in the beauty of other things besides your outer self. Appreciating the other beautiful things out there does wonders for your overall inner beauty because you have inside of you, respect, admiration, and appreciation for something other than yourself..And that in itself is beautiful.

The chase for beauty should not be one of vanity, but one of deeper beauty, which is worldly and inner. Why obsess and spend tons of money and time focusing on the the outer house of yourself, because when that goes, and you begin to give up attempts at perfecting some fantastical "look", you will realize that you never were in the scheme of things in the right chase. And it will be a sad day because of all the energy, time, and money that was spent could have been saved, and just appreciation for the true beauty of life, nature, and people could have possibly given you happiness, but instead you spent life worrying about crow's feet around the eyes.
Stop, take a deep breath, look and listen. You will see the important beauty around you, and it will absolutely floor you and leave you breathless when you try to take it in. It exists outside of not only your doorstep, but outside of your realm of regular appreciation of things. You have to step out of that box to accept the fact that beauty,and I mean true beauty has no boundaries, no age limit, no color, and sometimes no physicality. It is within you, and it is around you, and it is forever. And when you step out of that small box that we all sometimes seem to exist in and inhabit, and look at it that way, a mirror is the last thing that you will care about.