The WEGOHEALTH Activist 30-Day Writing Challenge, Day 21

“Monday Motivation: What’s your life slogan? Explain what words or mantra that keep you going.”

So if you have been reading all month, then you know that my mantra is, ” I never give up.” I already discussed that, so I’ll tell you my new mantra for 2017. 

It is….you guessed it, ” I am uniquely beautiful.” 

Why? 

Because as I look over the past 55 years of my life, I see a very imperfect person who has made some really stupid decisions. But who hasn’t, right? I think though that the biggest mistake I made was forgetting what I just told you; 

” I am uniquely beautiful.” 

If I had remembered that, I would have absolutely made less mistakes and been happier. It was when I tried to conform and “fit in” that I ended up being unhappy. 

When I was a little girl, my mother wrote to me in my autograph book, a quote from Shakesphere’s Hamlet, Polonius’ words;

“This above all: to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

That was actually excellent advice. 

I also had on my bedroom door a plaque that I made with the words of  Henry David Thoreau. It said; 

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”

I made that plaque because I loved reading Thoreau and I related to that quote because that was how I felt. I was unique. Unique as in not like the rest of the children my age. I liked to read, listen to the adults discuss things and ponder over what I learned. I preferred the company of adults over children, most of the time. I enjoyed my own company even more. I was happy to be in my room all day writing, reading, crafting, playing, singing, or rearranging my things. 

I tried to improve myself because, one, I wanted too, and two, people seemed to be discontent with how I was. 

I got bullied at school over my looks, my thick glasses and my beliefs. I grew to hate school, but I didn’t hate learning. If home schooling had been an option in those days, I probably would have really flourished because my mother was a good teacher and most of the time, I enjoyed her. 

When I turned sixteen, over the summer, I got contact lenses, my body got curves, and my hair got curly. When I went back to school, the boys, the same boys that terrorized me in grade school, suddenly became very interested. I was supposed to be flattered. I was not. I was the same Janice on the inside that I had always been. But they didn’t see it. They didn’t see my unique beauty. And because they didn’t see it, they made me feel ugly. That was wrong. So try as they might, they did not get my attention, because they still, did not see me. 

I think we spend far too much time paying attention to what’s on the outside of a person. Outward beauty will eventually change, but inward beauty rarely does. That’s why we love our grandparents and our parents. We love them for who they are, not for what they looked like when they were young. And they love us, not for the babies we were, but for the adults we became. 

So getting back to my mantra for this year, ” I am uniquely beautiful,” it’s because I am. And you are too. We are all uniquely beautiful. The sooner we realize that and the sooner we stop trying to fit into manmade boxes of what acceptable beauty is, the happier we will become. 

I’m talking about the way God sees us. He doesn’t see cookie-cutter people. He looks into the heart and soul of the individual and sees their POTENTIAL. He sees what they are capable of becoming. He knows each and every one of us. We are all born beautiful. 

Psalms 139:13-18 says; 

“13 For you produced my kidneys;

You kept me screened off in my mother’s womb.

14 I praise you because in an awe-inspiring way I am wonderfully made.

Your works are wonderful,

I know this very well.

15 My bones were not hidden from you

When I was made in secret,

When I was woven in the depths of the earth.

16 Your eyes even saw me as an embryo;

All its parts were written in your book

Regarding the days when they were formed,

Before any of them existed.

17 So to me, how precious your thoughts are!

O God, how vast is the sum of them!

18 If I try to count them, they outnumber the grains of sand.

When I awake, I am still with you.” 
That’s what He wants us to understand. So I’m going to work on that and go in that direction and I’m not going to deviate. 

Janice Tindle, 1962