Beautiful

Today was an eye-opening day for me. My buddy Cody invited me to D.C. with his church's youth group to go talk with some homeless friends and give them some food, drinks, and supplies and it was definitely one of the best experiences I've ever had.

Too often I go about my day to day complaining about miniscule factors within my rediculously blessed life. As I started to talk to these people and hear their stories I soon realized how much I was learning and how bright these individuals are. Too often we as a people walk by the homeless and the poverty stricken people and judge them by saying that they're gonna steal my money or sexually harrass me etc. without really thinking about how they got there, or what their name is. It's sad that I never thought really to ask someone who looks homeless what their name was. Our names are so important to us, they give us a sense of respect and entitlement to our bodies, yet as soon as we see a human within a city that looks like they're hurting they don't have a name anymore. They get stereotyped into a huge sad pile that we like to call the poor or the homeless, where everyone walks by and looks and feels bad and doesn't do anything about it. It's almost like they're an exhibit in a museum of what not to be so we take it at face value and then exclude ourselves from any other type of confrentation because it could actually affect how we treat people or something. Today I realized that many of these generalizations are false and cruel and that these people may have just made one mistake or missed their break which has costed them a lot more because they had in comparison to us with so much, a lot more to lose. I noticed as I spoke with them and got to know them that I was understanding a lot of things about life and realizing a lot more through these people about certain things than I had in school. Their words also had so much more value because they've been through the struggle. It's not a history teacher that came from an affluent family talking about life on the streets as if she'd been there, these are the people, this is the body and soul of the streets and to be honest many of these people are beautiful human beings with so much to offer.

Seeing these people just really made me second guess what I thought of as beautiful, specifically in people. And as I thought about it more I started to see in my mind that what the world perceives as beautiful is not what I perceive as beautiful anymore. Some of the people that came to mind that I thought were some of the most beautiful people are not people I would've thought last year were beautiful. They're people that are real to me, that are confident in who they are. They're people that stand for something and believe in true good. They're people that live to lift others up and smile in spite of their downfalls or the shortcomings of others, because they understand that there is more to this world and this life than MY happiness, MY wealth, and MY success. This realization opens up our minds and our hearts to receive a world that is hurting more than we can understand, and helps us mend and heal the broken. This is what I call beautiful.