The search for beauty

What’s up peoples! Don't worry I didn't forgot about you, rather I couldn’t bring myself to write. These past few weeks have been kinda of strange. I was having a hard time figuring out where the real me was hiding out. Long story short, a mild identity crisis was experienced and I felt it was inappropriate to write when it wasn’t coming from an authentic place, when I was having a hard time differentiating between my own thoughts and ideas from the ones being presented and taught to me here. And after spending probably too much time in my own head…Jenna stop thinking so much…I was able to come out from my internalizations with a new sense of pride and confidence about where I am, what I am doing, and where I am going.

I would be straight up lying if told you I haven't changed since leaving the US three months ago. But change is not necessarily bad, the problem started when I momentarily lost sight and then one morning I woke up, looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize myself. I panicked, becoming alarmed at how quickly and easily I shed the garments of myself that I so deeply identified with as being me, how quickly the opinions I had such conviction about started to change, how my views on the world began to shift. Was I becoming a brainwashed robot!!???

After about a week of intense searching…I looked everywhere, under my bed, through my personal affects, in the pile of clothes in the corner of my room, and I couldn’t find me anywhere. I know I am super forgetful, clumsy, and a bit oblivious at times, but how the heck can I excuse misplacing myself? I even tried the good old back-tracking technique; you know what I’m talking about? When you sit still, close your eyes, and think really hard about the last place you saw something before loosing it. Then suddenly (and thank G-d) I was struck with clarity…I was looking in all the wrong places for self recognition.

As it always ends up being, it was in this weeks Torah reading that I found the answers to break free from my internal dramas (mirror mirror on the wall…who is the most dramatic of them all?). This week in Va-Yetzei, Jacob meets and marries the daughters of Laban...marrying sisters was legit in antiquity. I am sure you’ve heard the story, their 12 sons became the tribes of Israel, the youngest one was Joseph, the one with the spiffy coat who ended up bringing the Jews to Egypt…etc etc, read the Bible if you want more details. The section that really spoke to me was the Torah’s description of Rachel when she enters [stage right] for the first time. It describes her as being beautiful, which at first seemed rather curious since beauty is so exterior, why would the Torah have to use a detail like this to describe a person especially in regards to their merits? Don’t we tsk tsk magazines and mainstream culture everyday for putting such an emphasis on beauty?

However the next words clarify the type of beauty being referenced here. The Torah says “Rachel was beautiful in her features and in her complexion”. At first glimpse these two adjectives seem redundant. However it is expounded that these two descriptions refer to very different standards of attractiveness. ‘Features’ refers to one’s outward appearance while ‘complexion’ refers to something more internal; a person’s charm or charisma. A good example is a doll, which can be extraordinarily beautiful with symmetrical eyes, pouty lips, trendy clothing but without life, the doll is nothing but a cold statue.

On a parallel plane, the features-focused type of beauty refers to our outward presentation, the way we express ourselves to the world. It is said that our soul is clothed in three garments: thought, speech, and action. But these three pieces of clothing are not actually US. They are merely vehicles used to express the real us and can be shed just as quickly as put on. What gives this clothing form is the passion that exists inside of us, the ‘complexion’.

When you look into someone’s face, most notably their eyes, it is the charm which shines through, their passion, their excitement, their life-force. This intangible energy is what prompts a person’s mind to start thinking and heart to start feeling. This undefinable element is the step beforehand, before anything becomes an externalization. Once we start thinking ideas and feeling emotions, they take on a form of their own. But our truest essence exists as part of us, rather than as an independent entity...this is our true self. Once we start speaking and doing, we create something that is detached and separate from us.

Ideally, both beauties work in tandem, that our passions drive the thoughts we think, the words we speak, the things we do and create. This realization gave me the ability to look past the material expressions of self. Yes my lifestyle is slightly different; yes my diet has changed, I dress more modestly, my social circle has been modified. But at the end of the day these alterations in my lifestyle have allowed for me to focus more making my garments match the internal beauty.

It’s said that man is made in the image of G-d. The more I learn, the more I trust that this is NOT a reference to the shape of our noses, our limbs, and our physical bodies. This is obviously referring to our internal form, our passions and life energy. It is this spark that is made in the likeness of G-d, our charisma that permeates our entire being and all we do in the world. And needless to say, Rachel’s beauty inspired me to see that I was simply searching for identity in all the wrong places. Me’s not lost; me is just being expressed in a different way.

May your inner charm be infused into all you do!!!