Pulchritude

pul•chri•tude
(noun)

beauty.

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This is literally the definition. Pulchritudinous things are things that possess any level of beauty.

I think beauty is something we've talked about a lot, and was something we studied too, but I just want to reiterate something and maybe say something new.

In the world today, the concepts of beauty and prettiness have been so transformed that if we see something that doesn't fill our requirements or reach the appropriate levels, we dismiss it instantly. I need to stress that this isn't me blaming modern society or certain people I can think of; I'm talking about myself.

I know that I have standards of beauty and pulchritude that get so altered by my selfish desires and fantasy-driven imagination that I can never be satisfied.

And I know I'm not the only one.

Consumerist culture keeps reevaluating what we should see as beautiful year after year. My roommate was doing a project on contemporary views on the body and he mentioned that if Barbie dolls were real people, Barbie would have to be something like eight feet tall just so be able to have her body work properly with such a disproportionate torso and limbs.

The same goes for GI Joe, who wouldn't even be able to stand up do to his grossly enlarged muscle mass.

But I'm not saying that capitalist culture or mass marketing is to blame. I think that everyone of us is guilty for our own skewed perception of what is truly "beautiful". Magazines, models and HD televisions are able to capture and provide us with the fulfillment of our desires for something more beautiful, more attractive, and more stunning. But we'll never be satisfied, because beauty on the outside in completely dependent on the beauty inside.

Both inward beauty and outward beauty, that is, the pulchritude of the beautiful body is nothing without the splendour of the soul and the gorgeousness of the mind.
And this goes for more than just people. The beauty of nature and of the biological world are so much more exquisite when you have understand where they come from and how they work. A cytoskeleton can be beautiful just as much as the cell it supports and that cell can be just as pulchritudinous as the organism it is apart of.

Basically, I no longer want to take a dualist point of view when it comes to beauty and my perceptions of it. Body and form are interwoven together, just as God intended. God Himself embodies beauty as it is pinnacle, because He created beauty in the first place, and He saw that it was good, inside and out.

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OK, there's only one more thing I want to say about pulchritude, but it's more personal, so I'm putting it down here.

When I first met B, I thought of her as pretty attractive, but I didn't know that much about her. When we did start to become friends, I was taken back because she was not at all the person I thought she would be, and this worried me because she didn't fit my idea of how she was supposed to be beautiful. However, as I prayed more about it, and got to know her more and more, I realized that she was so much more than I ever could have imagined. Her beauty was not what I expected and I thank God for that, because as much as I love using imagination, I know how limited I am and how little of the possible I can ever imagine. I realized both the depth of beauty in B and the infinite deepness of magnificent beauty in God as well.

And this doesn't just apply to her, but to so many of my friends and family as well. I've been blessed with so many beautiful people in my life that I can't thank God for enough. Thanks for being so awesome, Tim, and so pulchritudinous.

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OK, all seriousness aside,

I got three exams done! Three more to go!

My poetry one was challenging, but still really good and I'm pretty proud of my essays, so we'll see! Rels and Spanish were on the same day, but I put my best into each one, so I know that I learned everything I could out of those classes. I hope my final marks reflect that, but if I made some stupid mistakes, that's not such a big deal, as long as I did the best I could.

And I'm heading home on Saturday!!! I just have to drop off at least two people at the airport and then sleep a lot! I'm really looking forward to the break. This semester has been good, but crazy-busy, so I'm looking forward to taking the time to read some books, watch some movies, and do any other crazy stuff we can think of. Also, I think the igloo might be a little wet this year . . . But we'll still make it! H2O PALACE!!!!!

See you in a week, Tim! Good luck with all your exams, endeavours, and exploits!

Bye!