How I looked wasn't that important to me as a kid perhaps because I was still completely innocent and oblivious of how terrible the world is.
As a teenager I had an identity crisis, I didn't quite understand what I was, I was so nebulous looking, I wasn't slim, I wasn't skinny, I was extreme, I lacked defining term.
With time things changed, I got to know it's normal and OK to be bit different from what is considered the norm, I read lots of stuffs about self love and acceptance, most especially,
Stuffs from "Ralph Waldo Emerson"
He's an excellent essayist, his quote,
To Be Yourself In A World That Is Constantly Trying To Make You Something Else Is The Greatest Accomplishment" remains my favourite.
How many times have you tried to change things about yourself? Admit it - 100? 1000? countless? I know that I spent much of
time wishing I was different - kinder, smarter, fattet, richer, chattier, more charming, sexier, just damn BETTER than myself,
I'm not talking about working on self-improvement in that 'be the best version of you' sort of way.
I'm talking about wanting to change who you fundamentally are rather than accepting yourself as a human work in progress, with all the gifts, talents and contradictions that brings.
Along the line on self discovery, I got to know that nobody can make you inferior without your consent,
Whilst some elements of the world out there may want us to conform, to change, to be something different than who we are, its up to us to decide what we're going to do about it.
It's a tough call to stand in the path of the waves of imagery of what's deemed 'acceptable' and not to get wet but we can do a lot to protect ourselves.
Or we can choose to continue to see ourselves as inadequate and wrong and try to change ourselves. Our choice. What's it going to be?