I was sitting on my couch watching Netflix (as most college students do to kill time or avoid work) when a summer storm was passing by and for some unbeknownst reason I got up and stood out in the rain for a solid two minutes. Now for those who know me, this is a giant surprise. They know I hate standing out in the rain. The moments of me wanting to get caught in a rainstorm are few and far between, especially if I have to go somewhere and if I did my hair that day.
As I stood out there, the wind picked up and the rain really started to pour, but there was something so freeing about this moment that I just stayed there. That’s when I started to wonder, “Why?” Why do I put so much importance on my appearance? I think women in general ask similar questions and I really wonder why do we put such an emphasis on our appearances? Or why do we believe what society tells us is the "standard" of beauty?
I didn’t come up with some enlightening answer at that very moment. In fact, I got even more frustrated with myself because I realized how much I was procrastinating on a summer school assignment I needed to turn in. It wasn’t until the following Sunday that through a mess of events I ended up going to a super late mass at a random church and got a satisfying answer from a homily. (Again not a perfect answer, but it at least satisfied my restless mind.)
The priest was talking about how every human has desires. These desires that we have in our hearts are initially good, however they can become disordered because we’re flawed human beings and we tend to mess up. For example, he brought up the desire to be loved, but loved for simply being you. It’s something that we all seek. Except through society, through lies of the world, disordered thinking, whatever you want to call it, this pure desire gets twisted and we develop a mentality that tells us, “in order to be worthy of love you have to be/do x, y and z.” “X, y and z” can be a multitude of things. It depends on the person, for some people they think they need to look a certain way or act a certain way and the list goes on. Essentially we just want someone to love us for who are, flaws and all.
Now this in itself is a hard topic to get into because there’s the level of vulnerability and the intricacy of love. But at the heart of the matter, you need to first realize that you are so worthy of love, simply by being you. Just by the fact that you exist, is enough of a reason to be worthy of love. Also, to realize you are not the only one who struggles with this idea. I struggle with it all the time. It’s been ingrained in many minds from society and expectations from others that people have to be put together and perfect all the time. This is false. We are human. We have flaws, hurts and problem. We are not perfect, and that is OK.
