Did you ever notice how some people radiate a good and loving heart?  It is like a benevolent feeling they carry with them, and it creates a beauty that can be seen with our eyes and also felt within us when we are around them.These special people may or may not have what the world considers to be physical beauty as it is defined by our culture.  But the beauty is there in whatever body they may inhabit.  Their beauty is inherent within them.

Now, here is another question.  Have you ever looked at a so-called beautiful person that looks like a magazine model and realized that their beauty is superficial?  And when they speak, it is haughty and mean-spirited?  This is a very sad phenomena, because bad behavior is often tolerated because of this “outside” beauty.  It is as if people do not want to accept that these “beautiful people” can be ugly inside.

I remember a guy I went to college with.  He was, well, homely, or what society would refer to as such.  He was one of the funniest people I had ever met.  He just kept us in stitches.  He was totally authentic and had a razor sharp wit.  And he was so nice.  He never made fun at the expense of anyone but himself.  Everybody loved to be around him.

Months later, sitting in the student lounge, I was looking at him and he looked handsome to me.  He was the same guy, but he looked so much more attractive than I had ever realized, or noticed before.  A week or so after that, I ran across some older pictures from when we first met, and realized that he looked exactly the same then as he did to me now.  That was a real moment of truth for me.  I could see that the beauty within him had changed my perception of his outer looks.

This revelation changed the way I think about people and beauty.  We can see things through a different, more perfect lens, if we delay our judgement of beauty and focus instead on the character of a person.  If we can look beyond the outside of a person, then we will be able to see what a person is like on the inside, where true beauty lives.