- Not The Only One!
- Post #92
- 10 Aug 23
- ” Wrap It up”
- Howdy,
- I say welcome again into the unknown crevices of my mind. I did a post a few weeks back called “The Doors ” and this one had similar motivations. I have never been on a Hollywood movie set, but I have seen on TV, or In movies the portrayal of an actual movie set. I think maybe most of us are familiar with hearing a producer or director screaming “cut” , to get a stop in the action. We are probably also familiar with the end of a production and hearing them say ” it’s a wrap” or ” wrap it up”. The production maybe finished , but it is a far cry from a finished product, as sometimes hundreds of hours will go into editing and trying to figure out what makes the final cut and what will be bonus material or an alternate ending on a disk. There is the occasional redo of a scene or two, but that is a rarity with cost over runs on the minds of many studio executives. I was wondering about ourselves and what do we consider to be a wrap in our own personal lives?. What do we deem necessary in our lives, before we step out of the door. I have shamelessly admitted to being a people watcher and often people will inspire me to smile or a hearty robust chuckle from within, as in my head. As Americans we spend millions of dollars on our pets, and perhaps rightfully so, because our pets can be more trustworthy than people and it is usually a judgment free zone. There has been some research done in the area of pets judging their pet owning parents, but we will have to save that for some other time☺️☺️. We spend a ton of money on our pets, but it doesn’t even begin to come close to the amount of money we spend on self. Some of the upkeep is necessary and some believe mandatory, but much of it is bound up in vanity as it fuels the need for us to disguise our flaws, frailties, brokenness, and do I dare say many of our insecurities. We can go from the basics of a little eye shadow , all the way up to a serious elective surgery for a breast augmentation , a tummy tuck, the age old face lift, or some other plastic surgery to make what we would consider an improvement over what God naturally blessed us with. We have artificial beliefs about beauty and health. We have to be attractive and fit, or we are somehow a social pariah. We bend to the all to often unspoken requirements as to what is acceptable and what is not when it comes to appearance, and the standards of beauty. Our culture has this polarization that you are either put together or one step away from looking as if you are homeless, or a third world country. And ,yes I get that there is a segment of the population that has just thrown in the towel ☺️☺️, like shopping in your pajamas, really?!, its a thing! . Let’s just look at some of the vanity. In most cases, contacts cost more than a cheap pair of glasses , but people don’t want to be known as old four eyes. I crossed this bridge with my daughter back In the day. She has beautiful eyes, and for the most part No one would know that she can’t see that well. I will give her kudos for breaking out the glasses as she recently discovered that her six year old needed glasses, and he didn’t want to be the only one in the family to wear glasses, so mom to the rescue, with the proper support. Right now, Beards are in fashion and so are tattoos . It’s a cyclical thing, and it will go back and forth and in all honesty it’s a personal preference thing. It’s kind of like a hairy chest , some prefer it and others will try to wax it away ☺️☺️. They are in style now, but they also sometimes hide or cover up scares, blemishes and other things that people would prefer not to be common knowledge, or public consumption, after all, who wants to try and explain eczema to a four year old. There is even this thing where tattoos become recycled as in covering up some bad choice that you made because you and your high school sweetheart didn’t go the distance . ☺️☺️ . Well, talking about things that are in fashion, let’s talk about male pattern Baldness. Yes, I’ve heard all about about bald men being sexy and , that may be true, but , it’s not a universal thing that everyone can pull off, and the same is true of Beards. The old adage is, just because you can do a thing, doesn’t mean that you should. Some people, just need to learn to say no! What about the other half of the equation, yes, the dreaded toupee, or the even more drastic hair plugs….ouch, both to you and your wallet ☺️☺️. I know that for some men Baldness is hard to accept, they tie it to their vitality, and that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. Oh! Yes the honorable mention in this category has to be the wrap around, or the comb over. We have all seen the former commander and chief Trump, and wonder what the hell was going on up there! ? If you don’t know the answer to that question , please allow me to help You out with that one. It’s a desperate cry for help☺️☺️. Trump, may be the premier one because of the spotlight ,but he is definitely not the only one who is screaming, please help me!☺️☺️. There is a reason why the make up industry does billions of dollars of business every year. We just have this desire to hide or mask who we really are. Here is one for the books, I once knew a lady who would put concealer on her legs to cover up varicose veins in her legs, hmm, who knew that legs would require make up?. ☺️Men don’t have a corner on the market when it comes to hair .I think that when I was a kid, there were basically eight colors, but then somehow magically, Crayola came up with fifty eight other colors and women have used every single one of them in some sort of color scheme. It’s not just about covering the gray anymore , but we now have to be exotic ☺️☺️. How about the Tanning booths? , talking about not wanting to be seen for who you really are. I’m not going to make any cracks here about Casper, but You all know who you are, and at least you use to be one of the basics eight colors in the box ,before someone decided that black and white are no longer colors, but they some how forgot to mention that to the people who are so racially charged about non colors☺️. And yep, they reclassified poor Pluto as well, can you imagine just waking up one morning and finding out that you loss your planet status , talking about a tough morning that would be more than the standard one cup of coffee morning ☺️☺️. My daughter once tried one of those spray on tans, somehow, she became orange, not sure that is what she was shooting for ☺️. I want to say that I get it and completely relate to the pressures of conformity. I think that many times we think of peer pressure as something that is associated with school or college, but think again. Peer pressure can become envy , which can somehow turn into the not so friendly competition. If you are a man and you are fortunate enough to have a gorgeous woman on your arm or by your side, kudos!. However if you think that she is pulling it all together for you, think again! Women dress for other women, not to be somehow judged, or to be seen as less than ☺️☺️. This is a difference in men and women physic, basically as men, we really don’t care as much, or sometimes very little about how people see us and our attire, and yes at times it shows, and shows badly ☺️☺️. Women on the other hand, give great consideration to how they may be perceive by others. Somehow it plays into their value, net worth, and it can even come down to having a bad hair day, which most experience at some point. I, myself am in no way above the fray. Just a couple of weeks ago I had someone, that I didn’t know call me out on having skinny legs. This dude comes up to me , while I was impersonating a greeter at church. This dude comes up to me and says ,”hey Jim wants to talk to you”, my response was Jim who??, he says Jim Purdue wants to talk to You about those chicken legs of yours, yeah!, the dude had jokes, but guess what? The following week, I rethought the process and wore long pants the following week. It was a momentary laps in judgment, so the week after that I returned to my shorts, and I went who cares and so what!. ☺️☺️My immediate reaction was to hide and to cover up. I acquired an injury when I was thirteen years old playing football. It went undetected for a while, but it led me to having a noticeable limp do to the injury to my hip, which in turned led me to having a hip replacement very early in life . As a result of that for years I have worn a lift in my shoe to reduce the effect of the limp. It has also had the effect of a little more physical comfort as well, when I’m walk , so not only is it a disguise, but it is also functional. I don’t have a bone to pick with anyone about the things that people do to feel more secure about who they are, but I think it goes to motivation. If you are doing something for yourself and solely for you , then good!, if you are doing it to conform and to impress others, then, maybe not so much! I am happy with who I am and all that makes up me, but if I have to put on a girdle to be pleasant enough to take out in public, then there may be an issue there. And yes, feel free to Google girdle ☺️☺️ I believe for most of us at our core , it comes down to acceptance. I find it incredibly remarkable that we both want to fit in , but also at the same time maintain our individuality. So I want to be like everyone else, but at the same time, not to much, I don’t want to get lost in the sea of vastness and forget who I really am. We find ourselves in this constant battle between our insecurities and wanting, seeking, and needing unconditional acceptance. I also want to caution you before you just forsake and dissect every little thing about your character and the things that make you uniquely you. Most times people don’t see us exactly as we see ourselves. They are not intimately familiar with us as we are with ourselves. For instance the lady who use to put make up on her legs, probably most didn’t notice, didn’t care or both. People aren’t usually up in our personal space enough to notice the things about us that we pick out while gazing into a vanity mirror. Most probably don’t notice the hair growing in and around my ears, but if it becomes an afro, or starts to resemble a broccoli floret , then that’s another story in itself ☺️☺️. I want to remind some and inform others, that God knows you intimately and better than you know yourself. He knows about all of your quirks and your sometimes not so subtle nuances and He still loves you, in fact He’s crazy about you, just like most of us are about our kids, or any other thing(s), that we have created. He doesn’t demand that you clean up your act, or to pretend to be something or someone that you are not, I mean like what is the point? We can fool others and even sometimes ourselves, but, not an all knowing God. And if by some small chance you think that you can fool God, then you really need to reexamine whom you believe God to be . His base go to move is love, because that is who He is. We search high and low for the kind of unconditional love and acceptance that God offers, to only find that what we thought we had found was full of conditions and wanted us to jump through more hoops than a trained circus animal. ☺️☺️. God has always been about come as you are, and He will do the heavy lifting for you. He will help you with the hard things, but He loves you as you are. So, I want to challenge you to do something radical, and everything that I say here will be radical to some. How about instead of trying to hide and disguise our scares, that we wear them boldly on the outside and show the beautiful tapestry of all that God has knitted together in our lives. God can make beauty from our brokenness ,and the sometimes ash heaps that we turn our lives into, and and often does. Personally I’m drawn to transparent people, who aren’t afraid to admit to daily struggles and the fact that they don’t have it all together. If they can be and show who they honestly are, then maybe myself and the next person can show who we really are and share in our brokenness to others as well. There is power there, there is acceptance there, and there is love there, and in the midst of all of that God is working in the details. When we are vulnerable, it both frees us from the world of make believe and pretending to be someone we are not, but it also draws others in ,and invites them to a safe place to be vulnerable and share their brokenness and experiences as well. That is the only way we begin the healing process and find security. If the only security that you have in your life comes from ” Jake with State Farm “, then good luck with that !.
- Till Next Time ✌️ Peace!
- Sandy The Southerner
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