The Leopard one day, in the hearing of the Fox, was very loud in the praise of his own beautifully spotted skin. The Fox thereupon told him, that handsome as he might be, he considered that he himself was yet a great deal handsomer. “Your beauty is of the body,” said the Fox, “mine is of the mind.”
Beauty is skin deep.
-Aesop, 6th century
Hello coffee lovers and avid readers! Welcome to Olive’s School at Olive’s Café, where you explore life lessons told by great Grandpa Aesop.
When I first read this fable, I thought it would be perfect to talk about it, especially in the age of social media. I truly believe that this quote and the story are wonderful and everyone, including myself, can learn from it. Beauty has been perceived as something that is physical and on the outside, but what people don’t understand is that beauty is only skin deep, and that true beauty comes from the inside. At least, that’s what I believe. However, not a lot of people think like that.
Being beautiful on the outside is not a bad thing, if anything being beautiful is wonderful and everyone is beautiful whether people know it or not. However, the moment any of us opens up to the world, whether online or in real life, we judge whether or not we are beautiful. We constantly take pictures of ourselves and show the world what we look like, and then we look for validation from complete strangers instead being confident about how we look and who we are as human beings. We do so much to show off our beauty that we forget that beauty is only skin deep, and to find true beauty we must look from within. We can have all the luxury brands, wealthy lifestyle, and cosmetic demonstrations that can make us beautiful on the outside, but it doesn’t compare to who we are and how we feel on the inside. We all go through a journey of discovery while coming across obstacles that test us in our lives, but there’s no doubt that we truly come out beautiful as we work hard to achieve our own happiness.
The story and quote can be related to this century because of how we view beauty online and in real life. The story reminds us that we shouldn’t depend on outside aesthetics to know that we’re beautiful, but we can have a beautiful mind just from our own experience and obstacles. We shouldn’t have to go through struggles to have a beautiful mind, but we should view the struggles in front of us as a test to see how we would react and change in ourselves. Beauty isn’t always a rose, but it could be a sunflower, a lilac, a violet, a daisy, any flower you can think of. What matters most is how these flowers grow and blossom from seed to pedal.
Remember, beauty may be skin deep, but anyone can be beautiful on the inside first and then on the outside.
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