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Beauty.

It's amazing what an effect it can have.

In nature, we don't appreciate it enough. And yet it lifts the spirit, giving a perspective on life... making one's own existence seem so small, so insignificant compared to the vastness and the intricacies of the world around us.

And yet, it makes us feel like we are part of something important. It helps us understand or at least BEGIN to understand life in the broader concept. The little things seem to melt away.

In humans, we focus on it in a very narrow way. We have a sense of beauty that is so very specific and we, as a society, seem to be obsessed with it. I'm not excluded from this group.

I see pretty things and I want them. I see a beautiful man and I want him. I see a beautiful woman and I want to be her. I make goals for myself to be that ideal image of beauty. I set standards for myself -- ever higher standards -- below which I feel ugly.

But there are those moments -- those wonderful, secret moments -- when I love my body, my eyes, my skin, my teeth, my nails, my smile, my movements, my size.

And, oh!, the effect it has on a woman - on me - when I feel beautiful! I am confident, I am happy, I am full of energy and friendship and lust and generosity.

I am motivated to be more than beautiful, but I am motivated to be beautiful as it broungs out so much goodness.

And I know it should not be a focus. I know it is vain. I know it likely makes me less of a person. Shallow. Showing a lack of self confidence. But it is me. And I will stop hating myself for it.