We Are Made of "Star-Stuff"
Sometimes we don't feel like we are beautiful, or special, or wonderful. We criticize ourselves when we look in the mirror, from the moment we get up, to the moment we go to bed for the night. The images of "beauty" that the media presents us don't help. We spend so much time trying to live up to a standard of beauty that only 1 percent of the population can achieve – and even those models need to be "Photoshopped" in order to remove what we see as "imperfections". I was outside yesterday, trying to photograph Mexican Evening Primroses. These flowers bloom every year at this time around my house, then they die back as the season progresses. Many people think of them as an invasive species, but I think they are beautiful. The one I picked had a White Lined Sphinx Caterpillar sitting inside of it – a beautiful insect that will someday grow into a Hummingbird Moth. Unfortunately, photographing delicate flowers is difficult when they are blowing in the wind and moving all over the place. In desperation, I grabbed the stem of the flower to try to hold it still, and I got a close up picture of the skin on my hand, glistening in the sun. The image in this post, is an enhanced view of the rainbow colors that were shining on my skin when I took that photograph. This is what we look like to a caterpillar! We glisten, and we glow with thousands of points of rainbow colored light. We shine like the Universe. To quote Carl Sagan, "We are made of star-stuff." The next time you think you are not beautiful, remember this image.
