There is a saying: ''What you see is what you get''......but what if what you see is not what you get?
We put much stock into what we see with our eyes, but here's the thing; what we see is very much influenced by our biases, prejudices, perceptions, previous experiences, etc.etc. because we do not only see [as in the function of the eyes] with our eyes, we also see with our understanding of and interpretation of what it is we are seeing.
(We say ''I see what you mean'', but we don't actually see it with our eyes, we see it with our minds/understanding/perceptions.)
Joseph Carey Merrick, often known as John Merrick, The Elephant man, was in many peoples eyes viewed as a freak, a monster, until someone took the time to get to know him and discovered that he was a highly intelligent, gentle and insightful human being. The way he looked, they discovered, had very little to do with who he was as a human being.
It can be easy to make snap judgments about people by the way they dress, the way they speak, the way they carry themselves, the way they look, and often once we have made a judgement it can be difficult to change it.
There is another saying: ''You can't judge a book by the cover.''
More often than not, our first impressions of something or someone is exactly that, a judgement determined by our impressions of the ''cover''.
The cover however, tells us nothing of the substance beneath that cover.
This was evident to me the other day when I took a bite out of a beautiful looking apple, only to discover that it was rotten underneath its glossy and ruby red cover.
(Not to mention the times I have cracked an egg into the frying pan only to discover that the shell was the only thing about the egg that was not off.)
According to those in the know, beauty attracts....human beings, animals, insects, etc. so the way a ''cover'' looks is important but so is substance, because if the substance is ''rotten'' then we are inclined to disregard the cover no matter how beautiful and or attractive it is.
Which makes me ponder oysters,......their cover would probably not be considered beautiful or attractive, yet someone at some time, decided to push past the outer cover and look inside and in doing so found something regarded by many as very beautiful, ....a glistening, precious pearl.
(That's the thing, a beautiful and attractive cover does not necessarily mean that underneath its cover there is a beautiful and attractive interior/substance, just as an unattractive or ''ugly'' cover does not necessarily mean that underneath its cover there is an ugly or unattractive interior/substance.)
Okay, so enough pre-amble......some of us look in the mirror and do not like what we see, we see this wrong, that too small, that too big, etc.etc. and in our own eyes, we don't measure up.
We may even think thoughts like: If only I was better looking.......then my life would be so much better, I would have more friends, more people would like me, etc.etc....which in my view is understandable since we probably attach more importance to ''looks'' in today's society than ever before. But, looks, like anything organic, has a use by date, wheres substance such as insight, wisdom, and compassion, does not.
(Socrates, a Greek philosopher who died in 399, BC, was described as a short and ugly man, never wrote down any of his philosophies, yet his ''substance'' remains with us 2000 odd years later.)
In my view, there is a sense of freedom and inner strength in embracing who we are, accepting those bits of ourselves we cannot change (as in for instance how tall we are) and changing the things about ourselves we cannot accept.
All of us will one day look a bit like ''oysters'' if we are lucky enough to live long lives, what we may have to decide however is whether the substance we leave behind will contain a glistening, precious pearl.
''Nobody is superior, nobody is inferior,
but nobody is equal either.
People are simply unique,
incomparable.
You are you,
and I am I.''
[Osho]
(the above image is made with graphite)
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