The Ultimate Factor That Makes Anyone Beautiful
The secret sauce of magnetic beauty takes years to develop
How many people have you met in your life, roughly?
According to my back-of-the-envelope calculation, I probably have met around 20 million people during my seven decades.
I did not know all of them in-depth of course, but I shared the same life moment temporarily, the way you would pass by people on a busy street or a shopping mall, or share a bus or plane ride, including those with whom you might have a brief conversation.
Of these 20 million people, there were probably twenty who were really beautiful, so beautiful that I still remember them.
And I don't mean just physically beautiful, even though some of them were beautiful in that way as well.
Since I’m a straight male, my attention to physical beauty had been more focused on women than men in the past.
So I’ve seen some “Ice Queens,” women that should be beautiful by all classic standards of beauty but who were not.
I was always puzzled by that contradiction: how come a woman beautiful by common objective physical standards does not come across as beautiful but, on the contrary, as cold and repulsive?
In that, women are not alone.
I’ve seen guys as well, as sharp as a movie star, tall with a chiseled chin and all that, who should’ve come across as beautiful but didn’t.
Why?
Why physical beauty alone is not enough to make a person warm, precious, and beautiful inside-out?
“Money,” you say?
I thought about that too but I’ve seen ugly people with hundreds of millions of dollars as well as really poor folks in whose beautiful presence I could live forever if I could.
Cynics say money goes a long way to make anyone beautiful.
This overlooks something that some monied people have — self-confidence. If money makes you confident, then that creates an aura of its own that sometimes translates as “charisma.”
But not always. I’ve met rich folks really fidgety, a total nervous wreck despite their millions, which made them ugly.
That adjective “fidgety” perhaps holds the key to the secret of beauty.
When someone is fidgety, he or she is NOT present.
Their elevator is stuck on another level. Their mind is busy wandering somewhere else.
They are not here.
Period.
For example, I can usually know whether a person is present with me or not right away. If they spell my name “Ugar” I know right away that they are responding to another person that they conjured up in their minds and not the real me who has a different name.
Such folks continue to write “Ugar” and call me “You-gar” even after I correct their mistake. It’s not an ego thing. I’m not hurt at all when they mess up my name. But I also immediately know that they are not with me here and now. That steals the beauty of the moment right away.
Sharing the here-and-now with the person in front of us, and showing a real interest in the other person is ultimately what makes a person beautiful.
That’s not something we are born with. Paying attention and keeping our awareness beam on the other person is a skill and power that take years to master.
But when nurtured and developed, that kind of attention creates its own magnetism noticed by the others immediately. It evolves into the kind of irresistible beauty that is remembered. We feel whole, protected, and warm when we interact with such persons.
In my experience, physical beauty helps but it’s secondary and fleeting.
Genuine interest in the other person, on the other hand, creates beautiful memories that heal, honor the moment, and last a lifetime.