Look In The Mirror, It Is Still You Elita Sohmer Clayman

Have you ever looked in the mirror and thought “is this me, today?” You may not like your hair this day or your eyes may be puffed or your cheeks too red or maybe, that dreaded blemish is there today.

The old expression is “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Another one is “sometimes people are, beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. Just in what they are.” Do you know women, like that saying states? A friend of mine has a daughter who is somewhat heavy and she is a bit plain, but she has this marvelous, vivacious personality that you are drawn to her kindness and generosity to others. She appears beautiful on the outside because she is surely beautiful on the inside.  She went on this online dating site and posted her picture and got not one reply for months. She was about to give up on it; when one night a man named David  posted on there that he would like to meet her. They met at a restaurant and he was an average looking man, quite tall, a bit balding, but a terrific and happy smile. They clicked, courted for six months and he took her to New York City for a few days’ vacation and getting to know her better time. While there, he went out one morning  while she was in the hotel exercise room and bought a diamond, quite a nice size engagement ring and that night at dinner on their last night there, he proposed to her. She was ecstatic and he was happy and they made a nice pair.

At the wedding, the clergyman told the guests that David and Eva had met through a dating service online and that before he chose her picture to make the response to the website, he thought to himself that she was indeed too pretty to want him. Well, he was wrong, she did want him and she was not too pretty to want him. People who knew her all of her thirty some years, never saw her as pretty. He saw her as pretty and that she probably would not want him because she was too good looking for him.

It is interesting to hear of his observation on her looks, because no one ever viewed her that way. They married and are expecting their first child, a girl in a few months. Everyone knows that she will be pretty as her Mom and those of us who did not think she was that, realize now she is and was. Franz Kafka said “anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.” It is said that beauty is not real. Beauty only exists in perception.

I get my hair done every Friday. For the last few Fridays, I have had aching knees, so I chose not to go to the hair salon, because the chair I sit in to get it done, is low to the floor and the stylist does not want it raised higher, because it is difficult for her to do her work at a higher height. So I chose to eliminate the ordeal of getting it done because it made my knees ache more. Every time I look in the mirror and see my hair not done exactly like I am use to it; I think “who is this old lady of seventy-eight.” It is not Elita; it must be her sister, though I never had a sister.

 Then I think to myself, it is still me, just with a different hair do or a hair doesn’t.

I keep telling myself that, yet whenever I take a peek in the mirror, I still think, it is not me. I went out one day to the physical therapist last week and was waiting for everyone to say; oh you got a new ‘do’.

No one even noticed or if they did, they were too polite to comment that I looked so different. I felt different, no one really cared, no one commented and no one probably even noticed the change.

It goes to show you that what you feel about yourself does not always happen to be what someone else thinks of you. Sometimes you will see a handsome man with a very plain woman. You try not to think this, but you do anyway. What does he see in her? It is said that “beauty is not the appearance of someone, but, it is their personality and how they are on the inside, as well as their heart.”

When we go to dance competitions, there is a judge there and he is quite a handsome man. His wife is one of the executives and she helps to run the competitions. She is quite a rough person when she is getting the competitors lined up for their next dance event. She is what you would call quite ugly, but she makes herself so attractive, that you think, wow, she is kind of a different attractive person. However, her personality is an unrefined way of talking, so all the makeup and fancy hairdos do not help her to look nicer

One night as we were returning from my competing in one of the rounds there, we went up on the elevator and I had to change costumes for my next competition event into a different dress. She and her husband were on the elevator and as we got in from another floor, they smiled at us. She said to me “I saw your last heat (event) dancing and you did beautifully. Are you changing for your next heat? I hope you look as wonderful in it, as you did before. You are quite lovely.” I looked around in the elevator to see if she was talking to someone else or was it me? I said thank you and we exited the elevator on our room’s floor.

I was amazed that these words came from her usually, unpleasant mouth, when she is on the floor gathering the competitor couple to be on time and etc. etc. I started to think about it as I was dressing again in the next outfit for the coming dance. I thought it out and then I realized something about her.

She had two distinct personalities which she used at the competitions. The first one was to try and efficiently gather the competitors to be on time for their event (heat) and to get them worked up perhaps with her caustic and biting manner. Her real personality was the nicer, kinder and softer tone she used with me on the elevator. Perhaps, we thought her ugly, because of her manner and when we see her in the gentler mode, we see her as better looking.

I know of several people who are not attractive, however they carry themselves with a posture and demeanor that they are gorgeous and standing tall persons.  After a while of knowing them, you almost come to believe they are gorgeous and have a very appealing personality. They have made you think of them in the more attractive mode and I give them credit, for thinking of their self as quite lovely. The Mirror is Cracked was the name of a mystery movie twenty-five years ago. This can apply to these people who see themselves looking pretty and desirable. They project this about themselves to others and after a while, the others begin to perceive them in this pretty position. The mirror is not cracked when they look at their face in that mirror.

I realize that when I look in the mirror today and this week, that I am still me, the slim me, the pretty me and if the hair is different, so be it.  I am still the exact person, I was the last time I got my hair done and thought I was really, really good looking. I did not change, I am me, the hair might be done differently, but I did not change. My perception of me should be, you are the same and the same is good.

Khalil Gibran said “beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.” Here is to eternity and beauty seen by us about us. Someone said “I have never seen a smiling face that was not beautiful.”  Smile, you are beautiful.