All of my friends are just gorgeous. I mean, they are just beautiful people. To look at them, one can’t help but wonder how so many good-looking people managed to find each other and get along so well. Why there aren’t cameras flashing everywhere they go, remains a mystery.
My friends are also very humble, hardworking, friendly, charming, smart, generous, helpful, sincere, etc. etc.. That is likely the reason that they shy away from the camera, choosing to enjoy the company of each other without public recognition. After all, you can’t capture a person’s personality on film. I love being in the company of my friends, because they make me feel beautiful, too.
There are a number of other reasons that I like my friends, but let’s just stick with this one reason for the now.
Lately, I’ve been noticing that people think that I’m younger than I am. Not by a few years, but by nearly a decade. (A decade is a third of my life.) A lot of people think that I’m in my early twenties. I’m not sure if it’s because of my appearance or because of my demeanour. I certainly hope it’s the former. While this might seem flattering, I’m a little bit uneasy with it.
Eight or ten years of experience is a lot of experience, especially when those years are a part of your early adulthood. When people think that I am so much younger than I am, I’m afraid that they are not giving me the credit for my life experiences that I feel I am due. Now, this might just be me being vain. Really, I should just accept the compliment, shouldn’t I?
And, to be fair, if they are judging my age based on my demeanour, they wouldn’t be wrong to do so. I really can’t make a strong argument for my adulthood. I’m not much more responsible than I was ten years ago, I don’t have a job and am going to school, I don’t have a girlfriend or even the hint of one (and I probably couldn’t support one), and my social skills are riddled with incongruities. Really, I’ve only aged temporally.
So, when I grow up, if that time ever comes around, I want to be a beautiful man. I want to be a good-looking guy, with a job, a girlfriend, and a keen awareness of the people around me. I want to be able to draw on my experiences to help me make better decisions that I can defend and feel confident about. I want to stay true to my word, keeping my promises and remaining integral. I also want to make apologies for the wrongs I’ve committed in my past. I want to get up in the morning and go to work, making sure that I’m on time everyday (older people are punctual, aren’t they?). I’d like to come home to a beautiful woman, who is only slightly better than me. Most of all, however, I want to be able to look in the mirror and think, “Dude, you look good.”
Now, I know that looks aren’t everything, but I certainly think that you can always present your best self. In an individualized context, everybody is the most gorgeous person in the world. When I really think about it, there are so few people who look so distinctly different from the people around them that they stand out. It’s the people who present their best self to the world that get recognized.
In terms of my appearance, this is really something that I have to work on maintaining. A few weeks ago, while I was at a family event, a cousin of mine (seriously stunning, and a fashionista in her own right) told me to keep my look. I think she meant that whatever I was rocking that day was working for me. So, I’ll detail out what I remember wearing:
- a black suit
- buzz cut
- shaved face
I’m pretty sure that’s it. Not much, eh?
I haven’t shaved my face or cut my hair since then, nor have I worn a black suit. (I’ll be sure to do some grooming before the week starts.) I think the trade-off for me has been comfort over confidence. I feel confident when I feel that I look good, but that confidence means that I have to trade-in a bit of comfort. Who likes wearing a suit, with a tie acting as a sartorial noose? Shaving hurts my face because of my sensitive skin, and cutting my hair makes me itchy for at least the next 12 hours. And, who am I presenting myself to? The same people who I see everyday. Shouldn’t I be as comfortable around these people as possible?
Well, no. These are the people who do see you everyday. These are the people who, through repetition, have come to know you, what you look like, and will remember you. These are the people you need to impress most. These are the people you should be most confident around.
It was a few months ago that my friend – remember that all of my friends are good-looking people – said to me, “If you look like this all the time, then you’ll get the ladies.” On that day, I had dressed up nicely because I simply wanted to. Most other times, I would wear a hat, a wrinkled shirt, an over-worn pair of jeans, and ratty old shoes. You see? I impressed my friend. She already knew me to be a good person, but she recognized the need for me to top it all off by dressing to impress, as it were.
On that day, she reminded me of something: people look at you, and judge you based on what they see. So, if I want to be a beautiful man to the world-at-large, I need to remember that people will look at what I’m wearing, and how I appear, before being able to look past it.
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