Touching Heaven

I was thinking about love and fantasy lovers, and how we tend to idealize beauty.

We award people labels such as "Sexiest Man Alive" and "Miss USA". And beauty is a commodity. It can be traded for wealth and privilege.

We have contests and award prizes to people who possess certain qualities of beauty. I used to watch those contests and feel a sense of disappointment that I could never be that beautiful.

Then one day, I realized that the contestants were all starting to look alike. It was almost like paint-by-number sets. Their hair color and styles varied slightly, and there were some differences in the facial features, but their bodies pretty much looked alike. I stopped watching beauty contests.

And over the years, I came to understand that there are as many different standards of beauty as there are human beings. Sure, we all have preferences, and that's okay. Our attraction to certain physical qualities stems from a biological urge to create perfect offspring.

And so we imagine that being with someone with certain physical qualities would be a quality experience. Well, if that were so, I would think there would be fewer breakups and divorces in Hollywood than there are everywhere else. In fact, there are probably more.

Part of that probably stems from the fact that if physical beauty is the main attraction, what's going to happen when someone comes along that is even more beautiful? And part of it stems from the fact that no matter what a person looks like, you ultimately relate to who they are, including whatever baggage they haven't dealt with and the resulting insecurities from that.

So, go ahead and enjoy your fantasies, but know they are just that. In reality, that supermodel or leading man is just another human being with all the stuff that goes along with being human.

If you really want to touch heaven, touch a beautiful soul. That's where the magic is.