Bon Journal

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder or just skin deep

Keats wrote,"A thing of beauty is a joy forever."

Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? What is beautiful to one person may not be beautiful to another.

Or is it just skin deep? All that glitters is not gold. You can't judge a book by its cover. But the cover is all we have to make a quick assessment. And that first assessment determines whether we'd continue and how we'd proceed.

My mom told me about sending her photograph to a long distance suitor. She chose a group picture and forced the gentleman to guess.

I did the same, sending a photograph of three girls for him to guess. Unfortunately, I was not his first choice but his last. I should have known then that there was no mutual attraction. Nevertheless, I still flew halfway around the world to meet this mysterious person. The minute I stepped off the plane and saw his face, I knew he wasn't the one. The shock of meeting me in the pouring rain caused him to swerve off the ramp and ruin the bonnet of his car. Luckily he had many male friends who played bridge. I spent the rest of the weekend playing bridge with his friends.

There's a story of a woman who was going to meet her penpal in a restaurant for the first time. She asked an older woman to wear her rose while she hid in the corner. Only when she saw that the woman was approached and she liked the look of her penpal did she emerge to introduce herself to him.

There's another story of a girl who received a photograph of a good-looking guy out of the blue. The instant physical attraction was so overwhelming that she had to protect herself by writing, "I have many single girl friends who would love to meet you." And then she proceeded to send his picture to all her single girl friends to validate that he was indeed a good looking man.

Long distance correspondence and cyberspace interaction removes attraction of the physical kind and interaction at the dynamic, multi-dimensional and multi-sensory levels.

Beauty is more than skin deep. In cyberspace, it goes to the inner core.

17 March 2004 Wednesday

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

..more

by John Keats