Love or Beauty?

Why does someone love someone? What is that something that attracts somebody to somebody. Is it love or beauty? These days people fall for these famous celebrities. Even if they look or smell bad, youth of this generation from all over the world are attracted towards them. Why? Why does appearance and beauty matters so much? Is it that beauty and love are same things but different names?

“The first time I saw her, I knew I was in love with her; madly in love.”

 I’ve been hearing such remarks quite often these days. I see how these guys and girls fall head over heels for each other, and I wonder how does it work? Love at first sight? Does such a thing really exist? How could you know you are in love and ready to spend the rest of your life with a person you just met? What when her beauty fades away and she becomes old? Would he still love her? Would he still like to spend the rest of his life with her? You say you are in love with the beautiful girl you met a couple of days ago, what would you do if she turned out to be a bad evil natured woman? Beauty has the capability to camouflage the flaws to some extent, so later when she gains fat over her muscles and her smooth skin gets wrinkled, would your feelings remain the same? No? So all along you weren’t in love. It was the appearance that caught you. Appearance gone, love gone.

Judging a book by its cover has become a common practice for us. We judge a person by how she looks and not how she thinks. Love of this generation depends on the outer beauty not the inner beauty; heart. This is one of the major reasons why everybody is busy in enhancing her appearance and does very less to purify her inner soul which is actually the element for love.

I do not believe in love at first sight which of course is pretty common and romanticized to great extent. The way physicality is confused with romance, similarly most of the people, confuse physical attraction with love. Love is a strong word. All other emotions originate from the notion love. It’s basically lust that attracts you to a person.

I’m not denying the fact that appearance doesn’t have an impact on our perception for the person because it does, but to a minor magnitude. It’s natural to give preference to a finer looking thing over the ordinary. But if a person who is below average in his looks have the grace of a gentleman and is decent and respectful in conversation while another person who is handsome beyond words is an arrogant hard man, who would be more liked?

On the other hand, if somebody is attracted towards someone by love he will always love her regardless of her beauty. No matter how old she becomes, he is still going to be with her. I am not saying that personality doesn’t changes. It does. Like every other thing personality does change but according to the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, study conducted at Berkeley, personality changes for better with age. And one wouldn’t mind if his love changes her personality for better; If she starts thinking in more sensible way, if she becomes strong enough to protect herself,  If now she has learnt to hold her head up high and not cares about what people say? Who would mind that? At least I won’t.

Age enhances personality and the beauty. But the beauty of an 80 old women would be her confidence, style and personality. And that comes from experience which comes with age. The point I’m trying to make here is that when one’s love becomes old he don’t look at the outer beauty but to the inner beauty. That is because he himself would become old and would develop the same changes. He would start looking things differently.

And even with time, the maturity level increases and so does our way of perceiving things. We don’t see things the way we used to see. In the similar fashion, at the age of 80 one wouldn’t see his love with the eyes of a young man, but instead with those of an old man. And if he loved her back in those days, then now he would love her even better; selflessly and tenderly. Because when age increases, maturity level also increases.

Love and beauty have things in common but I wouldn’t call them directly proportional. We love people because of their inner soul; heart. Everybody has heart which beats for their love but don’t ugly people have hearts? Don’t they have a right to love or to be loved? Why is it that people are attracted towards pretty faces and not ugly ones? What if you met with an accident and lost your pretty face. Wouldn’t you still want your love to love you? I think we all should give it a thought.

In the end I would just like to say that basically the attraction for beauty isn’t love but lust. The attraction by appearance is lust and attraction by personality is love. Love is the only emotion which keeps soul mates bonded even when beauty fades away. This is reason we don’t love people by their appearance but by their personality and heart. No matter how pretty face you see, if she doesn’t have a good personality then a sensibly mature person wouldn’t fall for her.