Well, I suppose this is somewhat outrageous, but I am a bit outrageous, as you know. And I am interested to know what it is that unusually good-looking people might have to complain about.
It is a myth that unusually good-looking people get asked out on dates all the time; sometimes they feel that their beauty isolates them. And of course they might have to deal with the resentment of others and think that if they don't act friendly and happy simply all of the time, others will snarl at them.
Speaking from a philosophical and religious point of view, all human beings are beautiful because each and every human being is made in the image and likeness of God. The Facebook friend of a Facebook friend has a campaign to get strangers to say that her sister with Down Syndrome--who doesn't think she is beautiful--is beautiful. And philosophically and religiously speaking, she is very beautiful indeed. Aesthetically speaking, which I suspect was the actual concern of the young lady with Down Syndrome, she has lovely eyes.
It is hard to have a serious conversation about the aesthetic beauty of human beings even though it is an absolute obsession in every culture. There has even been an attempt to quantify it, with such measurements as the "millihelen" and discussions about symmetry. The inability to have a frank and serious talk about it may be because we notice from the cradle that children more beautiful than we are get more attention, and we don't like it. It is particularly galling when beauty seems to be more important than any other consideration, including being good. I suspect there have been attempts by Christians--like the nineteeth century Canadian Presbyterian ladies Lucy Maud Montgomery grew up around--to dethrone beauty as a virtue, but they have been drowned by the pagan love-of-beauty juggernaut.
As a Christian, I feel that I should not notice when people are aesthetically pleasing and should value them only for their goodness. But as a sinner and an artist (which is not the same thing), I always notice when people are aesthetically pleasing and like to be around unusually good-looking people--to a point. If a beautiful person really shocks the stuffing out of me, I do not want to hang around. And, of course, many men look best when they are 19 or 20, and it would not be appropriate for 39+ Auntie S. to hang out with 20 year olds. At least, not now that I have just said that.
As for one's own beauty, it is very hard to be a judge. I was told almost every school day for about seven years by other children that I was irredeemably ugly. On the bright side, I was told almost every school day for about seven years by adults that I was incredibly smart. Thus I tend to labour under twin delusions that I am both uglier and smarter than I actually am. But a quick look at the one school photo I have on my computer reveals that I was a pretty little girl, albeit with a pink and undistinguished nose, and a study of my bank account reveals a decidedly impractical nature.
Fortunately for my self esteem, a number of eccentric men--usually ones who fixate on strawberry-blondes--have assured me that I am incredibly beautiful, all that and a bag of chips, etc. My husband thinks the blue-eyed strawberry-blonde Maxine on "Jewish Mum of the Year" is very beautiful, and we all know about his lifelong crush on Dame Emma.
It is thanks to these strawberry-blonde loving eccentrics--bless their hearts--that I can discuss the aesthetic beauty of humans without falling into a deep depression and can admire beautiful women without resentment. Oh, and thanks to B.A. I can admire other handsome men without wanting to possess them and grinding my teeth to stumps because I can't.
Well, enough about me. It would be kindly if the unusually good-looking were to tell the rest of us their reflections on what it has meant to them to be unusually good-looking. Anonymous comments are allowed, and even the reflections of unusually handsome men are welcome, but I now have 24/7 internet access so I will be weeding the combox with a merciless hand. Nobody is allowed to mock anyone in my combox.
If you are genuinely confused as to whether you are unusually good-looking or not, ask yourself how frequently you have heard the sentence "You should be a model." By the way, if you used to be unusually good-looking (e.g. in your twenties) and you no longer are, I'd be interested in hearing about what that is like, too. Is it a relief or a loss or both?
Update: My electronic spy says someone in the USA recently typed "What to do when your boyfriend is discerning the priesthood?" into a search engine. The short answer is dump him now. Either he is being called by God to be a priest, in which case you don't want to get in the way, or he is just not that into you, in which case you don't want to be his cozy little security blanket.
Tell him you can still be friends, and you will pray for him and hope he will be very happy. When you have finished crying and throwing things in private, have a girls' night in which your friends make you the center of attention. "I Will Survive" is a song that will be conducive to your healing. Don't take him back without an abject and tearful apology.
Update 2: A very sensible objection from a reader who was in the boyfriend-discerning boat: As a woman married to a man who tried the discernment card when he got cold feet, I couldn't disagree with your advice on what to do with a discerning boyfriend more. At least in my situation, the correct answer was, "What did your spiritual director say? Oh, you don't have one? Then get one and if he tells you we need to stop dating, I'll understand." Father Spiritual Director concelebrated our Nuptial Mass a year later and baptized our first child a little over a year after that. Well, nothing succeeds like success! I'll point out merely that my reader took charge of the situation by suggesting a spiritual director and by pointing out this discernment might mean no more her (because a spiritual authority would say so). I admit that her real-life approach is a lot more sensitive than mine. But both approaches are better than being strung along for five years and then dumped a week before Boyfriend the Pinhead is ordained to the diaconate. And I know such things happen because a once heard such a story from an overly smug priest right from his pulpit. I think we were supposed to go, "Awwwww!"
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