LUKY
DID YOU ever listen to Earl Nightingale in the early morning Springbok Radio show?
We did, and it always amazes me that this man could think up something new in the line of encouragement and inspiration each day.
One morning I missed him, though my husband, driving home from night shift on the mine, picked him up on his car radio.
"You'd have been very cross with Earl Nightingale this morning, Ma" he told me, struggling to hide a smile.
"How come?"
"Well", my husband said - subconsciously straightening himself - "he was saying how men of forty-five are lithe and trim, youthful-looking and at the peak of their professional careers, while their wives are overweight, dowdy and. . ." - his voice died uncertainly away.
"You know how it is", I said, shrugging, "Some people are utterly obsessed with weight and the body beautiful.
I saw a photo of Bette Davis last week and she looks like my teenage daughter, and so does Marlene Dietrich, although she was already a granny when I was in primary school.
You can't compete with them."
Funny how things happen in sequence.
An hour later I met a woman with a little boy of two or three.
He had a cast in one eye and she was trying to coax him into wearing his glasses, one lens of which was shrouded in plaster.
"He is so self-conscious about wearing his glasses", she said nervously, trying to smile.
"He thinks they make him look ugly."
And so this little chap of two or three already felt that he was looking ugly and trying not to.
I couldn't help feeling sorry for the child, because I have spent many years of my life worrying about weight and other beauty problems.
That little kid of two or three had more time on his hands than I did, but if he'd got any sense he would have put those glasses on his nose right away and forgotten about them.
There are very few beautiful women who would not lose some of their appeal if someone turned a garden hose on them.
Each of us has got something wrong with his looks.
Some people have bandy legs, and I often think that's why slacks made such a big hit with the female population.
Other people have cauliflower ears or square hands, buck teeth or blonde eyelashes.
I have heard girls crying about the shape of their noses and the colour of their eyes and hair.
And in the midst of that I always remember my mother's voice raised in warning:
"How can you be so ungrateful, moaning about your appearance when God gave you such good health?"
At the time we just sighed:
"Oh Mommy! You don't understand!"
Just as my daughter used to say to me: "Oh Mommy! I couldn't even begin to explain to you how I feel."
But I do know, and she didn't have to explain at all.
However, though I think it's important for everyone to be scrupulously clean and to try to make the best of personal looks, I'd advise anyone who has beauty or weight problems to stop worrying overmuch and to concentrate on his or her personality instead.
Because though I've seen that looks can attract friends, I've always found it was personality that keeps them.
Catherine Nicolette
I rather think it was myself who used to sigh from the depths of my teenage South African soul that Mom didn't understand how I felt.
Really, teenage years were not easy at all.
But the funniest thing I remember from that time is when I, in all seriousness, asked Mom;
"What is the difference between mere prettiness and true beauty?"
And Mom, without raising her eyes from her newspaper and cup of coffee, replied without missing a beat;
"Estee Lauder."
The Wonderful Earl Nightingale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5CrZ7lIO58
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