How to Be Comfortable in Your Skin

I've mentioned in a previous post that I enjoy people-watching. It's rewarding not just because it provides comic relief on a regular basis. Yes, my friends, even people-watching teaches us something deep and life-changing. People-watching teaches us how to be comfortable in our skin--how to be present to who we are as God's creation.

I have to be honest. I have not been truly comfortable in my skin for any significant period of time; and actually, there are still many days that I am very uncomfortable in my skin. I chalk most of this up to the fact that I care too much about what people think about me; and so I often look at myself through my perceptions of how other people look at me. (I know, even reading that is exhausting--try living it!) This is perhaps why people-watching has been the key to change.

Human beings often categorize themselves based on looks, money, education, history, property, caste, guanxi and many other quantitative measures. We rate each other according to clothes, speech, social connections, houses and vehicles. It's kind of nauseating how much value we place on external categories when we measure the value of a person. All of this measuring feeds the vicious cycle of inability to be comfortable in our own skin.

But if we actually spend time with humans, observe them in various environments, watch their coming and going, their conversations and habits and their interactions with others, we learn that behind the external categories is a person who stains their perfect clothes, yells at their children, betrays friends, berates customer service representatives and doesn't keep their impeccable house that clean. It is impossible for people to live up to external standards, regardless of what initial appearances may be. Why, then, would we continue to feed the cycle?

Humans, without exception, are imperfect. We are not valuable as we measure up to externally pressured categories. We are valuable as who we are -- beings created in the very image of God Himself! Sure, the image is marred. But the skin we live in does not derive its worth from our efforts to fix what's broken. My worth--and yours--is squarely founded on our status as lovingly created, fiercely pursued...people.