#beauty-ness

what is beauty?

I know I’m not born with natural-thick-black-and-beautiful hair. As long as I remember most about my hair was that it is so thin and not really shiny. My hair is neither straight nor curly -maybe wavy but not so wavy. And, I know I can’t blame this to my mother after all, but most of my school days were full of lousy hair style. But that was the old story about my hair. Lately, I’ve found something that more interesting to look at my “ordinary” hair. At least, I have hair. And it’s so smooth, healthy and looks good. Especially after shampooing. After I wash it, clean it and dry it. It feels like with that fresh hair suddenly my face looks brighter, my body looks slimmer and my outfit feels cuter.

I often categorized a beautiful and good looking woman is when they have a beautiful and well-maintained hair -and also have fair skin, sharp nose, beautiful eyes and eyelashes, slim and wearing a nice dress :D. But still this hair part is so important. Oh! Maybe my definition of woman’s beauty seems so cliche, but I admit that those criteria often spoil my eyes and bring such a nice feeling to look at. Bad news is I didn’t feel that I fit in with those beautiful criteria that I created myself. Good news is that beauty is not defined as narrow as those criteria I’ve mentioned earlier. Beauty is so much wider and greater than just only physical appearances. It’s so wider that human just can’t stop talking and discussing about this.

My paternal grandmother is so beautiful in my eyes. She really has the best cooking of all. Thing I miss the most about her is how delicious and good her cooking taste are. In her age of 70's, she’s still so active and working as a farmer too –literally, a farmer who grows rice paddy, vegetables and others.

My maternal grandmother is beautiful too. She always doing almost everything on her own –despite her age and her comfortable environment which she can always choose to live with any of her eight children and just leisurely enjoy her days. But no. She always doing her own laundry, cleaning the house, cooking, washing dishes and sometimes baby sitting her grand and great-grandchildren. She maintains her physical-self so well. She always looking nice, clean and fresh most of the time. She looks so much younger than her ‘actual’ age.

Those in my college days, I’ve been admiring so many of my college teachers, but this particular smart and wise woman always be my favorite. I look at her as a classy woman because she is so smart, elegant, well-behaved, well-dressed, speak so little but explain so much when discussing about her research, her goals or about her students. She’s so active and doing lot of positive activities. She’s so beautiful to me because she always put a great effort to support for the advancement and benefit of others, especially her students.

One of my aunt look so beautiful to me. She’s a typical housewife but she’s so much more. Despite her limited formal education, she’s really an open minded person. Working as a full-time mother, I think she raised her kids well and also ‘raised’ her potential well too. She involved herself with many positive works like being an activist for Posyandu, pengajian (where several another woman gathering together to read Holy Quran every week), and lately she told me that she also involved as a counselor for a family counseling in her neighborhood. She’s a grateful person and rarely complaining about her life –when she can easily feel exhausted and reject her reality, especially when her husband suddenly had a heart problem and nearly can’t live a normal life anymore. My aunt is so beautiful she refuse gossiping others and choosing positivity instead.

My sister is really -really- beautiful in my eyes. She is the most kind and humble person in my life. Born as a second child of the family, she used to have lesser attention and affection. She’s been a victim of comparison to me –which maybe she used to think that her sister (which mean is me) is more beautiful, smarter, more popular, etc. When she’s still a little girl, she had a darker skin than any of our family member and therefore she used to be called ‘Nelson Mandela’ –oh my gosh! Nelson Mandela is a great person anyway. But despite of all those conditions, she grew up as a really gentle woman. She’s so helpful to other people and concern with other’s feeling. She is a natural forgiver. She’s so tough and value herself well. She is able to do most of household chores and she babysit my little sister well. She always speak kindness and spend lot of time to devote herself praying and reading Holy Quran. She’s so beautiful she choose to feel happy and grateful for life.

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See? So much beauty around me (us). It’s so much I can’t write all of those. Because beauty not only can be seen by our actual eyes but also by our ‘another’ eyes. Beauty is not merely about nice hair, or nice dress or slim body or great make up. How God is loving beauty and I believe that we as His creation were born with beauty. I think in this complex and full-of-distraction world, we just have to train our ‘eyes’ more to see those beauty-ness. 

So, I believe that I’m beautiful. In fact, I really am. To be able to see this world’s beauty is considered beautiful –for me. What is beauty for you?