Self-Appointed Divine Justices

I was disappointed with people during the time when the death of Robin Williams was announced. Along with a lot of my Facebook friends casting grossly unfair aspersions on his character, a popular Christian blogger I haven't followed since called suicide cowardly.

It hit pretty close to home. People were quite literally damning a man none of them actually knew beyond his celebrity status. Even before it came out that he was on heavy medications and suffering from a terrifying incurable disease, otherwise decent people were firm in their unGodly minds that his place in Hell was certain.

Amidst this astonishing throng of ill-conceived judgment, one of my more thoughtful friends posted a link to a beautiful talk by one of my religious leaders: Suicide: Some Things We Know, Some We Do Not, by Elder M. Russell Ballard . To quote in part his speech, which I highly advise everyone to read in full, he states;

“Obviously, we do not know the full circumstances surrounding every suicide. Only the Lord knows all the details, and he it is who will judge our actions here on earth.

When he does judge us, I feel he will take all things into consideration: our genetic and chemical makeup, our mental state, our intellectual capacity, the teachings we have received, the traditions of our fathers, our health, and so forth.”

It's so very fortunate for many people I know that they have not had to experience what it is to be diagnosed with a big word for a disease that they may never be free of. A condition that may eventually strip them of even their most basic faculties and capacities, trapping them effectively inside a broken body, their mind still active but unable to communicate with the world around it. A disease that cripples them so badly that someone has to feed them, bathe them, and wipe their ass like a helpless infant.

Introduce such a trying ordeal to heavy medication - and all psychiatric medication comes with the risks of creating a more unstable and erratic biochemistry - and isn't it easy to understand why even such a recognizably great man could be tempted beyond his ability to resist?

This is not a post about supporting suicide. This is a post about not judging others, and perhaps being a little kinder to them. I think if people would see chronic physical or mental illness for what it's really like - being brutally, endlessly tortured by a vicious attacker you can't defend against and have no hope of escaping - perhaps the response to such would be better in line with these self-righteous people who haven't even had to dream about what it's like to experience consistent lack of comfort and ability.

Beauty

This began as a comment I was going to post on a friend of mine's Facebook page. She had posted two status updates in two days about how someone had judged her appearance negatively. Now, it's a commentary on my blog about people and perspective.

Don't you find it odd to note that, even though as a society we have wildly diverging personal opinions on just about everything else, we each somehow develop extraordinarily similar opinions of what a beautiful woman (or man) should consist of?

I theorize one reason is that our personal proclivities, if they do not initially agree with the 6'0 120lb 32-DD Aphrodite or the Dorito-torsoed washboard-abbed Adonis, are methodically "shamed" out of us. I have a lot of brothers, and I noticed that if a maturing male among the group showed an interest in a girl who, for instance, was perfectly normal and ranging on the high end of an average BMI, he'd be accused of liking 'fatties' as if her size was an embarrassment; or if the girl in question had less-than-remarkable breasts, he'd be teased because he liked his women "boyish", and therefore he was totally a "homo".

Women may tend to be more subtle when expressing their judgments, but we both know how easy it is to pick up on another female's opinion of our bodies, choices, or personal inclinations regardless of whether or not she vocalizes it.

The false media archetype - or the "Photoshop standard", as I refer to it - of what beauty should consist of has been integrated into the cultural subconscious, and it takes conscious effort to stop deconstructing ourselves and others by some faked axiom of perfection on the cover of a magazine - an airbrushed perfection which is not attainable in nature. Of course, it's perfectly acceptable to find the tall, slender, and busty to be beautiful; that's kind of my build, and I'm equally fed up with the nasty looks and 'eat a sandwich' comments from other perfectly acceptable women of shapes and sizes that differ from mine.

What we find appealing in the gender toward which we feel attracted is intimately related with our sexual identities, and is accordingly personal and delicate. To have our healthy, natural inclinations bastardized and opposed from their very first debut can be deeply mortifying. People often ascribe terms like 'fetishist' to an individual attracted to something that varies from the standard; therefore, in order to avoid a term that labels a man or woman as deviant from the current social norm, his or her original predispositions may be suppressed, therefore allowing the standard opinion of what it is proper to desire to perpetuate unchallenged.

So, I guess that in short, perception of personal beauty and the beauty of others begins much as the rest of us does - fragile, and requiring of nurture and support to thrive. When we deny ourselves, or the individuals who have our love and trust don't contribute, more acceptance and encouragement than the Standard erodes, it's easy to be drawn into the endless discontent created by denying ourselves honest expression and attempting to achieve unrealistic expectations.

Of course, none of us should value or be valued strictly by outward appeal; but every now and then we all want to feel as though others recognize that we possess physical beauty. And, curiously and marvelously, one of the surest ways to see the beauty of ourselves is to recognize and address the beauty of others. The more we permit ourselves to accept as beautiful, the more beauty we feel permitted to accept about ourselves.