The Opposite of Ugly

Living Happy

Photo by Alex Vasey on Unsplash

This last week, because we have a local online newspaper that focuses on our community, I’ve been inundated by negativity by a couple of people. These are people who get our newspaper for free. It’s a lot of work. Imagine 1,000,000 words a year on top of my real job.

And yesterday, I just looked at Shaun and said, “I have failed.”

“You have not,” he blurted and then he paused. “How did you fail?”

“I can’t—I can’t understand these people. They just lash out with negatives and never support with positives. It’s hard to explain.”

“That’s not failing.”

“I’m failing because I’m lacking the empathy to understand them,” I said.

“So, you fail because you don’t understand their meanness?”

“Pretty much.”

And I really felt that. I tried to envision what some cool, balanced humans that I admire would do if they were faced with these people and their constant us-versus-them mentality in which they are the only ones villainized.

They’d not take it personally, I realized.

They’d actually feel a little sad, maybe paint a black bird, maybe write a picture book or a poem or plant a tree or sing out to the ocean and their loved ones and they’d move on.

There’s going to be a bit of a narrative jump here and I apologize, but it’ll work hopefully in the end.

A long time ago, I was on a trip to Europe with school. Because we were poor, I’d saved up all my money that I could from my jobs. I worked extra jobs. It was my first time on a plane. It was my first time out of New England and Ontario and here I was going to France and Spain, places my mom had never dreamed of going to. I had zero spending money. Actually, I had about $20 for ten days.

It was a big deal and I was so excited about the trip.

Photo by Chris Karidis on Unsplash

I was incredibly lonely the whole time even though I gasped at the beauty of the Pyrenees, met a cool artist from Gambon in Paris, was overcome with awe at the taste of a croissant, at the sight of a cathedral, at just the difference in the way the air smelled and felt in Madrid, the color of the Mediterranean Ocean. It was amazing.

None of the kids on the trip were my friends or in my friends group, and I was at the age where I really felt that—felt that loneliness, missed my friends even as I got to have this incredible experience. My level of poor made my stomach ache as everyone else paid for lunches and dinners (our breakfasts were included) and I couldn’t. They’d go out at night, dancing, clubbing. I couldn’t afford to. And I started to feel kind of ugly and left out, like I didn’t fit in and that the reason I didn’t fit in was because of something inside of me.

One night, some of the girls came back to our hotel, really drunk off sangria, and one girl, a popular and beautiful cheerleader, hooked her legs over the window of the hotel room and announced that she wanted to die.

Nobody paid attention.

She went out on a tiny ledge.

Nobody paid attention.

“I hate myself!” she yelled. “I hate who I am!”

Even though she was yelling, screaming to the world, perched above the streets of Madrid, I’m pretty sure the only reason I heard her above the drunken laughter in the room and the street noise below us was because I wasn’t cool enough or wealthy enough to have gone out drinking, and I was sober and hyper-aware of everyone and everything because of my loner feelings on the trip.

“I’m so ugly,” she told me. “I’m so ugly.”

“No, you’re beautiful,” I insisted.

“So ugly.”

“So beautiful.”

So, I talked to her, listed all the amazing things about her, and got her off the ledge and out of the window. She was so drunk and she passed out pretty soon afterward, but she survived. The next morning she woke up and acted like nothing happened. I’m not sure if she remembered it.

I do.

Photo by Hanna on Unsplash

I was no hero. So, please don’t think that. That’s not why I’m telling this story to try to get people to think that. I was just someone who was there and aware of what was going on.

This woman and I are Facebook friends now, which surprised me because I didn’t think she’d remember me at all (maybe she doesn’t actually), and I get to see flashes of her happiness, of the life she’s built, the other lives she’s impacted. It’s hard for me to reconcile that she’s the same person who was on that ledge.

Her life? It looks beautiful. It looks beautiful just like her. It is the opposite of ugly.

This isn’t a post about paying attention. It’s not even about lending a hand. And it’s not about mental health.

What this post is about is how we all sometimes feel so ugly and we believe it, how it’s hard to not believe it when people throw their negativity at you.

And sometimes when we believe that we’re ugly, we start to act that way. We send messages that are angry and not messages that are kind, or we focus on the messages that are angry and not the ones that are kind.

We think we are ugly and so we act ugly.

But we aren’t.

We are beautiful, and we can choose to act that way and think that way, too. We don’t have to just choose outrage. We don’t have to be so addicted to it that it gives us purpose and dopamine rushes. We can choose kindness and beauty, too.

Cato wrote, “We cannot control the evil tongues of others but a good life enables us to disregard them.”

This is true.

But also, we might feel like we can’t control our own dark thoughts, our own ugliness, but choosing beauty, choosing kindness, giving yourself and those around you empathy? That makes it so much easier to step back from the darkness and into the lit rooms. It makes it so much easier to make a positive difference and sending kind emails and texts and words instead of just the bad ones.

So, here, from me to you today, in case you need it. You are beautiful. You can believe that. You are.

---