Beauty

As my Brigham Young University undergraduate education is nearing an end, an important question has manifested itself and many have asked, "Are you worried you're graduating without being married?" Normally, this wouldn't be such a recurrent question but as dating dynamics are different at BYU, it is quite conventional. Naturally I wouldn't be too concerned about this question; however, Ralph Waldo Emerson disturbs me when he said, "The radiance of the human form, though sometimes astonishing, is only a burst of beauty for a few years or a few months, at the perfection of youth, and in most, rapidly declines." If beauty rapidly declines in most, maybe I should be more concerned in my pursuit for an eternal companion in order to find her before she reaches the tail end of her "burst." So back to the question, why aren't I married? In order to answer this question, it is important to understand what is necessary in a companion. People claim, true beauty is inner beauty and to some degree, I agree. But what really is beauty? Who decides what or who is beautiful? Is beauty objective? Beauty is hard to define, but we know it is antithetical to ugliness. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting." So can we conclude that beauty is determined by interest and that an interesting person is beautiful? I have found that uninteresting people are not attractive. They may be aesthetically pleasing but their company is not especially desired. Others argue that beauty is something we can not have. 'The grass is always greener on the other side.' To this Emerson questioned, "If I could put my hand on the north star, would it be as beautiful?" To remedy this dilemma, people counsel to lower your standards but in any endeavor should we be counseled to settle for less than our potential? There is a difference in settling and realizing your potential; however, executing is always harder than talking. When are we settling and when are we failing to reach our potential? Am I waiting to reach my potential or am I erroneous in the necessity to settle?