Over-Zealous Introspection

Disclaimer: I become deeply introspective around the end of each year. If you don’t want to hear my reflections on life, you might want to check back next year.

We watched The Voyage of the Dawn Treader last week. Of course, it wasn’t as good as the books, but what movie ever is? Answer: Holes. If you haven’t seen the movie or read the book I highly recommend you do both. The movie and the book are great!! It’s a children’s book, so it’s easy to get through it in just a few hours. Anyway…

At the beginning Lucy is wishing she was beautiful. Her older sister is known for being beautiful, and she longs to look like her. I think every woman (and probably most men) can relate to this feeling. I know I can. It’s so hard not to look in the mirror and only see flaws and things I would like to change. There comes a point in the movie when Lucy is looking through a book of spells to help some unusual friends become visible again, and she stumbles across a spell for beauty. She tears the page from the book and puts it in her pocket. Later that night, she climbs out of bed and recites the spell in the mirror. She is instantly changed to look like her sister, and is transported to a party, where all eyes are on her. She realizes that by doing the spell, she has actually turned into her sister, and she no longer exists. Because she doesn’t exist, her brothers and sister never found Narnia and missed out on the greatest adventure of their lives. Aslan finds her, and asks her what she has done. She tells him that she just wanted to be beautiful, and he tells her to think of all that she has lost by making that wish.

This hit me so hard. There are so many things that I want to change about myself. I wish I were more organized, kinder, thinner, more efficient, happier, a better cook, cleaner, more beautiful, healthier. The list goes on and on. But what if, magically, all these changes happened for me? What would I lose in the process? I’m not saying that I should stop trying to improve on my weaknesses. I’m just saying that maybe we need to look at our weaknesses and see if anything is gained. Maybe we can stop criticizing ourselves long enough to think about our strengths for a while.