Kathryn Lane: I want to look good, but I need to feel good.

Recently, a few things have occurred to me:
1. Being downtown can kind of suck. For the most part, everyone's drunk and I usually leave feeling more empty and tired than when I got there. Not to mention my feet hurt so bad that I want to stab someone with my heel at the end of the night.
2. When I go out, I have got to lower my expectations. I subconsciously go out thinking i'm going to meet cool new people, and I will tell you, in the 2 years I have lived here, there has been about 3 people I have met downtown that I am still friends with. We have to train our thinking to realize that going out is just to have a good time with girlfriends. Stop having expectations of meeting the love of your life. Period.
3. After this weekend, and this post, I realize that I go out too much. There is nothing wrong with going downtown, but there came a point this weekend, when I was out on west and the bouncer at dogwood let me in without checking my ID because he recognized me BY NAME, that I soberly looked around and thought, "what the hell am I doing here?" 9 out of 10 guys were walking around in their vneck affliction t's and doing the creepy stare, and most girls were dressed in their tightest mini skirts and tube tops (YES, we actually saw a girl in a tube top Saturday night) hair extensions, fake eyelashes, 6 inch heels, you name it. All while sucking in, standing in the perfect pose, and having a conversation with some random dude that is pretending to listen to her story about her favorite childhood memory while in fact is actually thinking about what she looks like naked. Anyways, it made me wonder what kind of society have we created that makes us feel that it's necessary to impress people that much on a superficial level? What happened to the inside of us? We take all of this time making our outward appearances look pretty while part of our souls are deteriorating because we don't take care of ourselves emotionally, spiritually, intellectually-- we have somewhat stopped challenging ourselves internally and have began to accept physical attention for love. Here's an idea: let's stimulate ourselves again, and this time, let's do it on the inside.
I am certainly my own worst enemy when it comes to this, and we are all to some degree superficial, and that's okay to a certain extent because we want to look and feel good. God gave us faces and bodies for a reason. But, when we base our whole being on who we meet, who we see, who is interested in us, how good we look that day, etc., it turns into a nasty cycle of being unhappy and constantly leaving us feeling unfulfilled and unsatisfied, just like I did on Saturday.

The whole point of this is because in the society we live in today, it's easy to get wrapped up in being superficial, for the most part- it's unfortunately encouraged. But, we need to remember the importance of doing things that energize us, make us happy, to love people more, find joy in hobbies and in every day things, work hard, and instead of focusing on meeting people all the time, meeting ourselves...reinventing ourselves, loving ourselves, figuring out who the hell we are, and what our calling in life is. And although going out and having a good time should definitely be done, we can't base our whole being on the weekends, because before we know it, our whole life will pass us by without us ever figuring out who we really are. As humans, we of course want to feel beautiful, but it is up to us to create a person within us that we are proud of. Someone that when we lay our head on our pillow at night can think, "I have done good today." Ultimately this will result in us feeling attractive as a whole, but doing so in the right way, from inward-->outward

So, go out and fall in love with your soul all over again. One of the million dollar questions in life is what our purpose is here on earth. I believe the best way to find it, is to find yourself first.

"IT TAKES A LOT OF REHEARSING FOR A MAN TO BE HIMSELF."

- ― William Saroyan

“Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.”