How to Live with Yourself

Trying to change the unchangeable leads only to misery

Every year sizeable fortunes are made by people who peddle impossible dreams to millions of over-optimistic individuals.

Whenever people buy an anti-aging face cream, a slimming food, or a breast developer, they are falling for the con trick that they can use a gimmick to improve their appearance. They can't, yet people still try, because they just don't stop to think about the realities of their situation.

Learning how to know yourself takes a long time and most of us don't achieve such understanding until we're well on in life. The basic skill in such self-understanding is sorting out the changeable from the unchangeable and then deciding whether you want to put yourself through the effort of making such changes.

We can think of four main areas where people need to assess themselves and their abilities. Once they've done that, they can decide whether they want to alter anything that is susceptible to correction and then settle down contentedly with what's left. The real self ...

Two of these areas are:

SIZE

This is the area where vast numbers of people suffer a great deal of unnecessary misery. We are all bombarded constantly by advice on how to be thin and there is a widespread notion that to be thin is to be right, and to be anything else is to be ugly or shameful. So people who are normal spend much of their time obsessed with their size.

We are all born with basically different constitutions. Some of us are programmed to have small breasts, heavy thighs, long torsos or blue eyes, and to see such people falling for the blandishments of 'spot reduction' diets or 'permanent weight loss' diets is distressing. Particularly when they don't work, otherwise the world would be filled with slim, trim, beautifully toned bodies, and the "diet industry" wouldn't be needed any more, and they'd go out of business!

The hard fact is that for some people the only way they can fit into what is currently regarded as a fashionable size is by self-starvation, which brings with it constant hunger and reduced health. Another possibility is cosmetic surgery, which is usually costly and sometimes risky. In fact riskier than the so-called marketers and peddlers within this industry will admit. And even after it is done, many people remain dissatisfied with the results.

There's nothing quite as sad as seeing people we know (whether personally, or through television or even film) to suddenly appear as though their skin is perfect without any blemish or sign or fine wrinkles. That's usually the first step because within a couple of years, looking at their photos or even face to face, we'll begin to doubt whether they are the same person we remember. Their faces take on a plastic, immovable look and many unfortunately begin to look less human. Have they gone under the knife for health or medical reasons? Or have they done this to protect and deny aging. Sadly many become victims of amusement among the ordinary every-day person's perspective of how a person should deal with wrinkles and greying hair associated with aging.

and AGING


So we come to aging. Age is inescapable - and why should or would we want to deny it anyway? Of course the alternative doesn't hold any attraction at all. There are many societies around the world where wrinkles are revered, not despised.

Yet we in the 'sophisticated' West seem to have the extraordinary notion that the only worthwhile people are aged 22 or so, and admitting to any birthday after the 29th is social suicide.

To use light makeup to enhance the face you have or wear attractive clothes to make you look as agreeable as you want to look is perfectly reasonable. But to mourn because you don't look the same as you did 20-30 years ago can be self-destructive - and expensive.


(Photo - copyright Dove) Full permission from "Accentuate the Positive - Now" -an address to High School Students and Size 16 Plus Groups, WA, 2002 ©RP-B Australia