Thought – Beauty Contests

To quote Dwayne Hoover from Little Miss Sunshine, “You know what?  Fuck beauty contests.  Life is one fucking beauty contest after another.  School, then college, then work …fuck that.  And fuck the Air Force Academy.  If I want to fly, I’ll find a way to fly.  You do what you love, and fuck the rest.”  Well said, whether you are partial to f-bombs or not.  Dwayne covers a lot of ground in a very short amount of time, ending with perhaps the single most important reminder on how to live a happy life; do what you love.  Do what you love, be with those you love, enjoy the things you love while you have the time, and put the rest in the rear view mirror before you distract yourself with rubbernecking and wreck it all.

Does it get any more simple than that?  Avoid the beauty contests of life, avoid the competition inherent to every day, and avoid making yourself unhappy to please others.  It’s unavoidable that responsibilities will get in the way and sometimes you will have to do what you have to do, not what you want to do, but that’s only a small part of your existence.  Go to the job, make the money, support the family, make the good choice, sure, but don’t forget to do what you love.  Don’t forget that life is fleeting, especially in the universal sense; we are here for a millisecond.  Don’t get caught up in the pageants that parade past, because they sure are attractive, but they’re not actually worth that much in the end.

What’s really worth it?  Family, friends, partners, children.  It might sound cheesy & obvious, but those are the things worth living for, those are the things you’ll miss when they’re gone.  It might take a disaster or death or blow to the head or perfectly timed movie quote to recall it, but we’ve always known what’s important, as long as we’re able to take the time to remember.  We can’t completely stop ourselves from signing up for the beauty contests, voluntarily enrolling to be judged my strangers, but we can sometimes pause long enough to let that beautiful fact hit us; that the contests aren’t what matter, that our real lives start when we surround ourselves with those people/things/hobbies/passions that we truly love, and that all the rest really can simply fuck off.