You are beautiful

What is it with beauty?  Why do I – and from my informal observations, pretty much the rest of the female population – have a need to be beautiful, to feel beautiful?  It’s a booming industry, apparently.  And it plays right into all our insecurities.  Noticed a new wrinkle?  There’s a creme to make it vanish…for just $49.95 per month plus postage and handling and we’ll send you a new lot EVERY three months!  I think most of it just a plain scam.  But that still doesn’t answer my own question.  Why do I have such a need, such a desire to feel beautiful?

True blue, dinky-di and ridgy-didge

Today is Australia Day.  On the 26th of January, 1788 our good ol’ English ancestors stepped upon our shores, bringing with them the first immigrants to our giant continent – convicts, of course.  Australia truly has a working class, grass roots beginning which is still reflected in our values today. 

Shame

I did something yesterday that I’m ashamed of.  I didn’t mean to.  But it was hurtful, insensitive, thoughtless.  Cruel, even.  There were a group of mums at a birthday party.  We were all chatting as mums do.  One of them,
Elisabeth, is an ex-teacher like myself.  She shared with us that  just that morning she had learned about the death of an ex-student.  She was very upset about it and we all shared in her pain.  She talked about how that girl is still 8 years old in her mind, although in reality she was in her mid-20s when she died.  The conversation turned to how hard it must be to lose a child.