Soulshine

“It’s not your hair that makes you handsome; it’s your personality.” Charlie Wehrley I have a good friend who’s gradually losing his hair. He likes to claim that it doesn’t really bother him, but he keeps a comb in his car (as vain as I am, I don’t even do that) and he’s always combing his hair forward to cover balding areas. He’s also constantly forcing it forward with his hand if the wind blows up. So I suspect that his hair loss bothers him more than he likes to let on. He’s the type of person who likes to laugh everything off, and that makes it hard to know just how much something painful really eats at his heart. But when hair loss came up again while we were talking recently I told him “It’s not your hair that makes you handsome; it’s your personality—and you’ll never lose that.” And it's really true. He has the type of personality that makes him loveable in every respect because it's who he REALLY is. Unfortunately in our society people often don’t ge...

It’s only when we shed concern for our outer-beauty that we can discover our true inner-beauty. In American culture, outer-beauty Is everything. We are encouraged to live and breathe our outer-appearance. Billions of dollars are spent each year on make-up, clothing, hair styles, skin care and weight loss because so many people are so unhappy with their physical appearance. In the chaos of this physical jungle, we lose touch with our souls. Our inner-beauty lies trapped and dormant under our fears concerning our outer-beauty, or lack thereof. And we forget that anyone can look like a well maintained mannequin. A mannequin has a one-dimensional beauty. It has physical appearance, including the nice clothes we place on it, but it has no personality, no soul. The day we stop being so concerned about looking like Barbie or Ken is the day that we make peace with our outer-appearance. It’s the day we come to love and accept our looks just as they are. It’s also the same day that...