“Your beauty isn’t worth a single coin,
if not for the love I carry within.
Were your beauty not enthroned in my heart,
it would find nowhere to rejoice.”
As the great Aşık Veysel says. In a world where beauty and aesthetics are treated as indispensable, we care about liking what we see in the mirror – but do we care just as much that there is love in the eyes that look at us, that the onlooker sees us as beautiful?
Or if beauty truly lives in the eye – in the heart – why do we spend so much energy adorning the outside?
If beauty takes its meaning from the “palace” we inhabit, why do we tend the self so meticulously, yet neglect the home our soul has moved into?
To be liked, to be noticed – it’s a need that never goes out of fashion, even as its definitions change across eras. And not only in romantic relationships, but in every relationship.
Yet in our time, where visuals are everything and form outruns meaning, “aesthetic” has been reduced to physical traits – stripped away from behavior, attitude, care, courtesy, and grace. We want to be admired for our brows, our eyes, our skin, our hair; we spend material and emotional effort to look flawless even in front of strangers, and still we don’t give the same importance to how we appear – and who we become – in the reflection of the people we love.
We develop countless methods to like ourselves in the mirror – from cosmetics to procedures, from make-up to photo filters – and we forget how profoundly a sincere smile can beautify a person.
We go from door to door looking for remedies to love and validate ourselves; we exhaust ourselves with “self-improvement,” while overlooking how quickly many wounds can mend simply by being with those we love – by feeling safe and affirmed in their presence.
We check follower counts and likes with devotion, but we neglect to take our relationships’ pulse – to check their health.
We forget the quiet elegance a simple “I’m sorry,” “How are you?”, “What can I do for you?”, “That looks wonderful on you,” “I love you” adds to the person saying it – and instead we strive for beauty with lipsticks that never smudge and mascaras that never run.
We miss how enduring the mark of compassion is: offering help, lending a hand, sharing small conversations, making someone smile, brightening their day – how these things don’t fade easily and how they heal us, too. We treat “well-groomed but sour-faced” as an achievement.
If we want to like our reflection in the water, first the water has to be clear. In the same way, we need people – and relationships – that show us ourselves clearly, that help us love what we see. And for that, we have to invest in those relationships and those people with the same consistency we invest in ourselves: day-and-night care, anti-aging routines, fatigue-fighting treatments.
If the universal proof of physical beauty is the “golden ratio,” then the proof of beauty in relationships is grace: the care couples show each other and the relationship they create together; the effort they put in; the respect and healthy distance they protect; the early acceptance of private space and individuality; and the awareness that the uniqueness I’m certain of in myself exists, just as truly, in the person in front of me.
At its core, grace is what pleases the eye; courtesy is what matters. If we desire both for ourselves, why are we so stingy when it comes to giving them? Why do we want to look pleasing to someone’s eyes, yet fail to keep their heart at ease; fail to tend that “palace,” make its owner feel special, respect their boundaries, their rules, their feelings?
What good is it if I’ve dressed the outside in lace and sparkle – but I’ve extinguished the light in the eyes looking back at me?
What good is it if I’m impeccably dressed – but I’ve torn down my throne and turned it to ruins?
Beauty belongs to the one who can see; and what is beauty to the one whose heart’s eye is blind?
