Beauty is life led passionately

Beauty is life led passionately.

Last night, I made a major decision.

To begin, it’s as though the events in my life in the past few months have been the perfect recipe for change. From the simplicity of having discovered Thoreau, to the complexity of having fallen in love with someone who wasn’t ready for a new relationship to the sudden experience of being really sick and alone in an apartment for an extended period of time, my life has been shaken and stirred.

It’s the choice that I made last night, however, that will shape my future decisions.

This winter, instead of taking the bus to work, I shall walk there and back and I shall do so by wearing ice grips every day.

There.

That’s it. That’s the big news!

Here’s why this is a major move on my part and why you might be able to recognize yourself in this tiny tale… I have suffered a lot of injuries in the past decade or so due to the fact that I have really bad knees. All it takes is an unexpected slip and voila, my knee cap dislocates; sometimes, it’s the entire knee that pops in and out. Yep, that’s enough to make you cringe – I wish I could describe the pain that is felt when something like this happens. Having succumbed to one too many of these injuries left me with an unreasonable fear of ice.

As all of these recent unfortunate events occured, I began to realize how stupid it was to fear something that would likely make me want to stay indoors instead of venturing outside for exercise and outdoor events. But that wasn’t the biggest psychological wall that prevented me from enjoying winter. I bought ice grips after dislocating my knee cap last winter and swore it wouldn’t happen again. But as I was planning my return to work, I found myself wondering the following, “if I wear these things, I’ll be the subject of ridicule!”. Thing is, the ice grips, when walking on bare sidewalks, make a loud “ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching” noise with every step, as though I was a mean, gun-slinging cowboy from the wild, wild West. It’s a bit embarassing. And it’s incredibly unfashionable.

What got to me was this idea that I was actually considering sacrificing my safety, my happiness and my lifestyle for the want to not be ‘embarassed’. We do this all the time… we don’t wear bike helmets because they’re not sexy, we wear high heels that cause us foot injury later on in life, we don’t get enough calories in a day in order to portray our droopy eyes and skeletal selves as ‘beautiful’. We do a lot of things that we don’t want to do or we sacrifice what we should or want to do all for this desire of appearing ‘normal’, ‘fashionable’ or ‘beautiful’.

‘Normal’ and ‘fashionable’ are concepts that are completely useless and if anything, a huge detriment to the quality of a person’s life. If being normal or fashionable are more important to you than to be of good character, then you are squandering your life away to the masses. Thank you, come again, we’ll do the thinking for you, comrade.

The only word that I care about is ‘beautiful’ but it is likely not the same definition that is shared with the majority of people. Beauty is found in a person’s character, in who that person is when you peel away the layers, when you see how she approaches life and how she behaves around others and how she cares for herself. Beauty is life led passionately. That is the beauty that I aspire for… that is the kind of beautiful that I want to be. I don’t care for your magazine beauty.

And now, I don’t care if I’m embarassed or not. I’ll wear the ice grips and we’ll laugh together.

I found an interview with Jacques Brel on youtube a little while ago.

It was the first time that I’d heard him speaking about himself. During this interview, he spoke about his deep passion for what he does by saying, “quand on a envie de faire un truc, il faut plonger comme un fou et le faire”. In English, that translates to “when we have an urge to do something, we have to dive in and just do it”.

So that’s how it is and how it will be because it’s more important to me than ever before. This is going to be a monumental season for me. And for you? A dare. I know too many people who have brilliant ideas or a desire to do things differently, whether it’s simplifying their lifestyle or dedicating themselves to that one big idea that they’ve had for a long time.

Do it.

Damn it, do it.

Most of all, start now.

How do you start?  With a change of priorities.  Jeanette Winterson said, “what you risk reveals what you value”.

Forget what people will think of you. When you can no longer breathe, when you’re bed-ridden because of an injury or when you’ve lost the physical or psychological ability to do what you want, what will you be thinking about? All of the events that you’ve attended for schmoozing and popularity reasons? All of the pairs of jeans that you own? All of the drunken one-night stands you’ve had? All of the time that you’ve spent at work and how maybe you should work even longer hours because it makes you look good?

No. You’ll be thinking of all of the chances that you had that you didn’t take because it was too scary. You’ll be thinking of the things that you were passionate about that you didn’t do because it was too unconventional, too big, too this or too that. You’ll be thinking of the person you wanted to love but didn’t because you were scared of what other people would think of seeing the two of you together. You’ll be regretting making excuses when you should have been plowing forward with the things that you love. The world needs more passion and less fear, less pretend.

As this year is about to end, I say that our new motto moving forward should be “I’m not scared anymore”.

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