Grace and Beauty

My I-Ching message for today is all about grace and beauty...mostly grace.

According to my big book grace is elegance, beauty, smoothness of form, politeness and generosity of spirit.

The message continued to tell me how to maintain grace and how it can affect my life's path.  I think I want to laugh, but at the same time this was pitiful, hurtful, and kind of threw me into despair. Grace has not been a long suit for me.  When I think of grace I think of refinement, the likes of which the rich seem to have in their genes at birth.  I, on the other hand have had to pull myself up by the boot-straps just to be able to walk the street without making a fool of myself.  (Oh dear, here come the giggles.)

As for the elegance...yeah, right, I buy my jewelry in those tiny little shops in the malls where I can buy six pairs of earrings for a couple of bucks, with a second six-pack for half price...while my clothes come from mail order catalogs....reeeeeaaaaal elegance.  (Picture sweat suits, with kittens and puppies on the shirts.)  There's elegance for you.  However, in my own defense I do ''clean up, pretty good" at times, but...trust me, that takes a lot of time.

Moving on to the beauty part.  You've got to be kidding me, that flew the coop decades ago, and has been replaced with a sagging chin, wrinkles, falling boobies, and nearly no-existent lips...where the h--l are they going?  Come back beauty, such as you were, I could really, really use you.

Now I'm going to tackle the smoothness of form.  Have you been following this blog???????  Trust me I have NO SMOOTHNESS OF FORM, what...so...ever.  Remember my mishap in the hallway last week?
The musical I preformed at bedtime?  Yeah, right...smooth moves...smooth moves.

However, all is not lost, I do have a slight salvation coming up.  The last two definitions of grace.  Politeness and generosity of spirit.  I try very hard to be polite, say please, excuse me and thank you, hold doors open for women with young children, and even gentlemen who appear to be in a hurry.  I allow customers to go ahead of me in line when they have just one item while my shopping cart is filled to the brim with food and goodies.  I smile at strangers passing by, even say hello and pat their doggies on their heads.  That's good, right?

And, finally I think I score on the generosity of spirit, too.  I don't have a lot financially or physically to share, but I think I do give generously from my spirit, being a good listener, a kind friend and neighbor, an understanding and caring being of other's pain and sorrow, a giver of time, and a lender of hand when needed.  That has to count for something, doesn't it?

So, I've decided I'm going to try to grow in grace, even though there are some areas of it that will probably continue to elude me.  However, the physical beauty thing is pretty much a thing of the past so I'm going to work on my inner beauty from here on out.  I'm going to pick myself up, dust myself off,  put on a party dress, maybe even high heels shoes, and show the world what THAT kind of beauty is all about.