Beauty and The Beast

…. for a long time, all my life to be precise, I thought they were two distinct people, moreover I have seen the movie, read the book, I saw them together, I saw them apart, two very different individuals. The beauty was very beautiful and the beast was very beasty, though beast turned out to be a real eye catcher that was under a spell. That is a write up for another day.

In real life, the beauty and the beast is one and the same person, simply being different side of the same coin and if we only encounter one side, we will swear blind the other does not exist, and when we have the unsolicited privilege of encountering the two personalities in the same person, we are perplexed beyond measure. How can good and evil be together? How can the same stream bring forth sweet and bitter water? How can love and hate come from the same heart? How can strength and weakness abide in the same body? How can care and abandoment come from the same lover? How can friendship and enmity come from the same person? How can praise and curses come from the same mouth? How can generousity and stinginess be from the same benevolent person? How can kindness and harshness co-exist? Paul lamented ‘for the good I want to do, I do not do, although I want to do good, evil is always here’ and Paul does do good, that we know. He concluded by lamenting ,’ what a wretched man, I am!’ At some level, even the very best of us is wretched. The most beautiful is a beast atimes and the beast can be beautiful. So where does this leave us? Tread carefully with human beings. We are not always or all what you encounter us to be at any particular point in time.

By and large, we are both the beast and the beauty. Some of us are doing the best we know to tame the beast, others are allowing him to roam free. If you encounter me as beauty today and tomorrow I emerge as the beast, do not be alarmed, I am still a work in progress and maybe, just maybe one day the beast will be fully tamed.

On those occasions when all we see is the beast, maybe if we can find the strength to reserve the thought that the beauty, the hunk might just be under the layer.

Stay good, stay sane, stay enlightened, we are all, everyone of us a work in progress.

Till later, my beasty beauty!