Beautiful

Have you ever been called “beautiful”?  Did you believe it?  I get it, believing such a strong compliment is hard, very, very, hard. It’s easy to think of yourself as conceited if you do believe it, and maybe that is the main reason that you don’t believe in the compliment.  The dictionary definition of beautiful is, “pleasing the senses or mind aesthetically.”  Let’s start from a teenage girl’s perspective and look at how they see the complimentary word.
Imagine being a 16 or 17 year old, teenage girl, in high school.  NOTHING you say or do can elevate the confidence that we may lack, but EVERYTHING you say or do can lower it.  Telling us to believe that we are beautiful is like telling us to believe that we have a chance of marrying Channing Tatum.  Some might say it’s nice to get a compliment, but sometimes I have no idea what to say to the word “beautiful” anymore.  You think of “you are beautiful today” as a compliment, but I think of it as an opportunity for someone to kiss butt and try to randomly give you a compliment that you cannot reply to.  What do you say to that?  “Thanks, so do you?” What if you are completely lying? Or, “I know?”… ummm conceited much?  Maybe I am wrong.  I don’t always view conceited people the right way, but saying I know in that situation is the completely wrong way of responding.  Teenage girls think of “beautiful”, and we immediately think of ourselves, or other “beautiful” girls.  “Beautiful” brings out the envy in us.  We never look at the glass as half full instead we look at it as half empty.  The way to look at this as a glass half full situation would be like hearing the word “beautiful” and thinking of the leaves in the fall, or beautiful flowers.  Beautiful doesn’t always have to be the appearance of a person and it NEVER has to resemble a young woman compared to another young woman. 
To my grandma, “beautiful” is leaves on trees in the fall, sunsets, flowers, animals, God’s creations.  You may think these answers are old school, cliché in fact.  Go back to the dictionary definition at the top.  I told you that it said, “beautiful: pleasing the senses or mind aesthetically”, and did you thoroughly think about this definition?  It literally says that it can be anything pleasing.  This doesn’t mean looking at hot girls with makeup plastered on their faces.  This also doesn’t mean you have to think of flowers either.  Maybe your definition of beautiful is how someone is on the inside.  Even a guy could be beautiful.  A baby can be beautiful, even food can beautiful.  My kind of beautiful can be anything appealing.  The sent of a flower is beautiful, the looks of a model is beautiful, the sound of music is beautiful, the taste of a doughnut is beautiful, and the voice of the smallest child is beautiful.  What do you see as beautiful?  The ugliest person can be beautiful because of the inside and how they are seen in the world. 
The next time you are called “beautiful”, think of being appealing, think of being loved, think of being pretty, or gorgeous, but also caring and loving on the inside.  Being beautiful doesn’t mean just looking pretty all the time, it means so much more.  Maybe you don’t like the compliment, maybe it won’t help your confidence, but being “beautiful” isn’t just a word that means pretty.  The next time the compliment comes, maybe just say thank you, because being beautiful is like being the best doughnut in the case, the cutest puppy in the pin, or the most beautiful Nebraska sunset.  You are beautiful, EVERYONE, in some way, is beautiful.