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The Beautiful Ugly
Until you learn to love the flawed and broken, lasting happiness will always be out of reach
I grew up in a high-demand religion that preached perfection was a requirement for salvation and the only way to achieve eternal happiness. Long after having left that faith, I still carry the emotional scars from spending years sprinting after happiness, only to always stumble because of my very human weaknesses.
I thought happiness — true happiness — wasn't for me because I wasn’t perfect. I was only worthy of a small piece of joy commensurate with my vast distance from the standard of godlike perfection.
While I was taught that my faith made me special, one of the elect of the Earth, the truth is that the faith of my youth was just an amplified version of the American narcissistic obsession with youth, beauty, and perfection.
Research shows that we have a beauty bias, giving favorable treatment to conventionally attractive people throughout society, from the workplace to cancer treatment.
We want to be beautiful and we see a certain configuration of physical traits as perfection.
Most of us fall short of both these grueling physical beauty standards and every other measure of perfection. This is why study after study shows us…
