by Craig S Yelle

Driving up the North Shore of Lake Superior in the fall can inspire many things and thoughts.  The brilliant colors bursting forth in their entire splendor never ceases to amaze me.  The fire maples in my front yard as they turn their vibrant red for a day or two and then drop to the earth, ending their cycle of life and beginning another inspires me.  That is beauty to me.

An eagle soaring overhead as I’m driving down the highway, catching the rising currents of air under its wings and effortlessly gliding higher into the sky brings my emotions to the surface every time I witness it.  That is beauty to me.

The sunset on a beach in the Dominican Republic on our honeymoon, its expansive radiant colors sweeping across the sky, reflecting off the turquoise blue water brought tears to my eyes and passion to my heart.  That is beauty to me.

Our world is filled with wonderfully beautiful events if we allow ourselves the opportunity to experience them.  But beauty is not something esthetic like many may believe, but it is the emotions that something stirs within us that make the experience or sight beautiful.

A woman touted as beautiful by today’s media and proclaimed beautiful by the film or television industry is attractive, by all means, but can each of us agree that they are indeed beautiful?

Scientific studies have been done to determine what makes a person attractive to other people.  They found that symmetry of the facial features was the determining factor of attractiveness for all of us.  So in other words, the better the left side of your face matches up with the right side of your face, the more attractive you will be deemed by others.  Is that beauty?  For me it is  physical attraction and possibly lust.

So then, what is beauty?

When I married my first wife, I have no doubt my memory is correct and she was beautiful.  Looking back at the pictures of that day, she was the perfect image of the happy bride.  The white flowing dress, the long train trailing behind her, her long hair caressing her face in just the right way, no one would dispute her beauty.

But many years later and much water under that bridge, looking back at that day and that picture, I can’t help but ponder what I saw in her back then.  The beauty that must have been there for me once has all but vanished like the wisps of fog coming off a river early in the morning in the fall.  So if one were to ask me today if she is beautiful, I could not honestly say that she is.

Now the love of my life for the past twelve years, Jenny, holds my passion and my heart.  She is the epitome of beauty in my mind and I’m sure some other’s as well.  Is it her symmetry that attracts me to her?  In part, perhaps, but saying someone is beautiful without experiencing and knowing that person is based on attraction and possibly that physical symmetry scientist speak of.

When I look at Jenny, her inner beauty speaks to me as loudly as her outer beauty.

When I held each of my sons’s when they were born and stared lovingly at their tiny faces, knowing that the love I felt for them was unconditional from that moment on.  That was a beautiful moment.

The old adage that beauty is in the eye of the beholder is true to a point, but for me, beauty is in the emotions created in the heart, mind and soul even more.

So when we look at that actress, or model, or whoever is now thrust in front of us by today’s media to accept as a beauty.  I smile to myself and say, “It is very possible they are beautiful, but I have no way of knowing that, yet.”