I’ve been listening to an audiobook about a soldier injured in Afghanistan. He had burns over 85% of his body.

This is the second book I’ve read about someone who had survived significant burns. Both tell of the grueling recovery and the difficult personal moments.

Something interesting from both stories is that both ended up significantly disfigured.

Both seemed to have gotten past that and found a group of people around them that love them unconditionally.

I left both stories convinced that it’s too easy to fall into the trap of how we look, how we dress and how we appear on the outside to those around us.

When both of these men were stripped of these trappings they seemed to have found truer and deeper relationships with those that remained.

If you ask most of us if beauty is on the inside, we’d probably say yes. If you asked us if we thought accumulating stuff to impress others was a good idea, we’d say no.

But then we’d probably go back to buying more stuff and spending a little too much time thinking about our clothes and how we look.

The path to more contentment lies elsewhere. In real, loving relationships with people that would love us if we were covered in scars.

The truth is that we are all full of imperfections, they just aren’t as easy to see as the scars on somebody who has survived significant burns.

And all of us have someone in our lives who loves us anyway. Let’s spend more time focused on that than impressing people who probably aren’t even paying attention anyway.

Make it a great day.

Jake

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