Try try…again?

My horoscope yesterday ended with a beautiful line: “…you need to work on eliminating middlemen and go-betweens as you pursue your ambition through sunlit fields that lift your spirit.”

Wow.

That very same morning a friend of mine sent me a link to the youtube video of Susan Boyle. I hadn’t seen it yet and it brought me to tears.

(Sorry, I had a little trouble uploading the video, but here's the link):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

Again…wow.

There are so many arbitrary rules about who gets to follow what dream. Look like this, be this age, know these people, blah, blah, blah. What moved me so much was that this woman pretty much chucked all those rules and loved what she did enough to make it the very best it could be. Then she had the guts to wade through all that sarcasm and general snarkiness and share what she had. When someone shares their heart in such a beautiful way; we all get a chance to see that those silly rules just don’t apply. And our snarkiness is banished for moment and replaced by gratitude and joy.

We singers hear some version of “try, try again” all the time. It’s such an overused, worn out cliché, but it’s also one of the truest. The really difficult thing is that so many times, I have tried my very best, put myself out there with joyful and skilled abandon…and fallen flat on my face. That hurts. It hurts when I screw up. It hurts more when I do my best no one likes it – or even cares. But somehow I still believe in all of this…enough to keep improving and putting it out there again. And then one day I don’t fall on my face. And then I don’t again. And maybe someone gets what I’m doing and is right there with me.

I know this is a beauty website and not a singing website. You may even think I’m neglecting my beauty junkie duties for a moment (gasp). But I’m not because – this just in – there are also a whole lot of silly rules about who gets to be beautiful and who gets to “feel pretty.” Beauty isn’t about how closely you resemble a famous person. It isn’t about how much money you have, how much you weigh, how old you are or any of that. It’s loving what you already have right now enough to make the best it can be. It’s being willing dress yourself up and put yourself out there a little. For me, it’s at night when I tell myself how much I matter by taking care of my skin. And each morning (well, most mornings) when I “play” with my beauty products, look in the mirror and remind myself that I’m beautiful.