I looked into the mirror today and realized that I no longer hate my nose.
It has not changed in shape or size. It still has the little bump on it’s bridge that started forming after I got fatally nailed with a football at age 7. It still hooks at the end a little bit and wrinkles up like an old peach when I laugh; but I just don’t hate it.
I don’t hate it like I have for the past 8 or so years, during which I went through a series of actions that made perfect sense in a society that tells you it’s better to change yourself than to accept yourself:
- Praying to God like, “Hey big guy, I know I don’t hit your line that often but maybe you could make my nose just a little bit straighter and smaller? Nothing too drastic, just a little more Instaglam if you know what I mean. Thanks!” – atheistchick5858
- This one is sad, but I’m totally owning it. Pressing down on the bridge of my nose because for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, so according to science and insecurity, this one definitely works.
- Last but most definitely not least, scrolling through Insta posts of nose jobs that are literally always captioned “This nose job isn’t even mine and it changed my life.” Keep looking at those for a few years and you WILL convince yourself that you’re getting some new plastic on your face fresh outta high school.
But today, I’m not looking at myself in the mirror, I’m looking through myself. I’m looking past my nose and my skin and my eyes, straight to the person I have become. The human being I have grown into so far. Someone who has learned compassion, and has passion for people they don’t know and things they don’t understand. Someone who will fight for what they believe in to the nth degree. Someone who wants to live a life vivid with meaning.
I look at myself, and for the first time, my nose is small.
It is small compared to the journey I have made and the moral compass I have kept. It is small compared to tears of joy and smiles of gratitude, and years of nose crinkling laughter that live around me; beyond cheap labels, or flawed reputation, or forever fading beauty.
I look at how far I have traveled, and though I have an infinity to go, I am proud of what I see. I am growing, I am loving, I am creating positivity; and yet, I am still tempted to do #3.
Considering a nose job after 2 paragraphs on self love? It doesn’t seem like that’s what I should have said, but it is.
It’s not inspirational, it’s true and disappointing.
Everything still stands: the pride, the fulfillment, the confidence. But there’s something I left out. It’s not a feeling that comes from the heart and blooms inside you with kindness and selflessness. It’s a false and shallow sense of personal growth that comes from the way you look.
I’m sure you’ve all heard of the glo-up.
People spend their lives waiting for a transformation Tuesday worthy change in appearance rather than spending time making a meaningful change within themselves.
And why, just for the sake of being pretty?
Yes, people generally want to be attractive, and I don’t blame them, because in our society we often times measure people by the way they look, the same way we do with how much they earn or which country they originate from. You all know what I’m talking about.
We have made it perfectly normal to have an attitude like “Hey, lose some weight and then we’ll stop ignoring you,” or “Be more like them and you’ll be dating in no time!” And of course, nobody says these things out loud. Instead, we form norms and create new borders, keeping us in superficial classes and groups; in which the easiest way to climb to a level of acceptance where you are treated with kindness is to change the way you look externally.
The forms in which we see this are varied, starting with guys who won’t even start a conversation with girls unless they’re “hot” (basic hetero example but there’s a lot of situations this fits) or just looking at who is socially accepted and noticed at school or the workplace.
We have openly supported this to a point where it being “okay to change the body that you came in,” has blown past the transgender movement and reconstructive surgery and straight into nose and boob jobs as if molding someone to fit society’s ideals will boost their actual sense of self or confidence at all.
We have made the “easiest way” quite possibly one of the most difficult mental challenges we can face; leaving us with the popularly growing option of putting not only our bodies, but our souls, under the knife.
We fixate on what are supposed to be our imperfections, and the media most definitely does not steer us clear.
Today’s “progressive” movement is all about the body. It is about being comfortable, and confident, and loving yourself.
While it advocates for so many positive things, such as WEARING WHAT YOU WANT (big one), it ultimately leads to a fixation on the body as definitive of who we are rather than the people we are becoming on the inside.
We scroll through posts and advertisements that scream “You’re beautiful honey!” or even more often “You’re beautiful honey! Or you will be as soon as you buy this face wash!!!” and feel no better about our bodies or ourselves, because superficiality can’t even make a dent when it comes to our identities and how we view ourselves.
You cannot love someone you do not know, so all this “self love” seems hollow.
We spend our days waiting for a glo up. Sometimes it comes, sometimes it doesn’t, but eventually, we’re all going to wrinkle up like old peaches.
Whether we are satisfied with our noses, our thighs, our lips; just our body overall, one day all that will be left for us to be satisfied with is ourselves. The real and true embodiment of you. Call it the soul, the spirit, the inner being, the conscience, or just whatever you want it to be. And if none of those match up with your beliefs, we don’t even have to acknowledge that it’s there.
But you can still feel the part of you that is not your body. It is the thoughts and the ideas and the feelings that run through us with the uncontainable force equivalent to that of nature itself. It is something that does not bend to fit our skin and bones. It is something that we ignore rather than explore because all we can grasp is the physical.
We spend all this time building up an image of ourselves that will fade, and forgetting to find out who we really are and make that person better.
We fail to find out who we are when we are alone, and truly alone. No body to fixate on, no family to love, no friends to laugh with, no money to spend, and no large 2 topping pizzas (only $7.99!) from pizza hut to eat.
A world of impossible perfection has grown around us in a beautiful and disturbing frenzy. We water the weeds twice a day and watch the light fade away, until it is dark, and we are grasping for comfort at ground level rather than trying to rise as people.
We don’t let flowers of true self love bloom. We let peaches grow old but not wrinkly.
Stuck in this garden or rather jungle, I wonder: should I give myself a chance?
And it used to take me a while to come back to what should always be an unwavering yes.
I will face myself eventually, as my physical image fades.
We will all face ourselves, without these things that we thought were essential to us. And then it will be clear, whether we gave ourselves this chance; to have empathy, to connect, and to grow.
And if I didn’t give myself the chance, I would know, because at 77 I would still be at ground level, searching for the same meaningless material peace I had been trying to find for the past 60 years.
Giving ourselves the chance to simply get out of the soil and reach for real understanding encourages others to make the same difficult choice, until there is no one left to water the weeds that have entangled themselves in our thoughts.
We all have the ability to drop our watering cans and simply reach.
note: The cover image is not mine! Please contact me to claim credit or have it removed.
fine heart thief 
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