People are beautiful when they are authentic. But what does “being authentic” mean? We are authentic when we accept ourselves as we are, with our weakness and our strength, and we are not lying to ourselves, not trying to hide or to justify the weaknesses.
It does not mean that we should not work to eradicate them, or at least to control them. Of course we should, for many reasons, the first of them being to become a better human being. But to do so we must first recognise and acknowledge our weaknesses, because we have to be conscious of them.
The man in the photograph is a guard in a private museum in India. I can’t say what his weaknesses are, nor his strengths. The image does not reveal them. But he is, for me, a strong example of authenticity. Someone happy, smiling, with a very unique look, not trying for a second to wear a mask of appearances. He seems authentic, and he is, in my opinion, beautiful.
