We have Venus at home

I recently ran across a social media post that highlighted photos of the planets in our solar system. I didn’t make it very far into the post, as I stopped on Venus. I have always been fascinated with Venus, and I think that is because it is a planet that is similar to ours. When I took astronomy, the teacher explained that Venus is the greenhouse effect on steroids. It’s a planet that is filled with gases which lock in heat, making it the hottest planet. Along with this, these gases create acidic clouds which create one storm that I wouldn’t want to be in. These things together make Venus the deadliest planet in our solar system.

Venus the planet was named after the Roman Goddess, Venus because it was the brightest star in the sky. The Romans named planets after their most important Gods, one of those being Venus. Venus was the Goddess of love and beauty. Romans, and every other culture before and after, have always placed a high value on love and beauty in their civilizations. Which is something that I find so fascinating.

If you’ve been following me for a while, then you know that I love beauty and beautiful things. I think that we can find beauty in everything. But I also think that we as humans spend so much of our lives trying to be beautiful that we sometimes turn into something that we are not. Let me explain.

No one wants to be beautiful simply to be beautiful. Beauty is a social concept that humans have created as long as we have been around. Beauty brings love, lust, social status, wealth, etc. People want to be beautiful for a reason. So, we created a multi-billion dollar industry all about being beautiful.

For me, I want to be beautiful in order to find love. So I’ve changed the clothes I’ve worn, dyed/cut my hair in different ways, self-tanned, worn make-up/didn’t wear make-up, anything that you could do to be prettier, I did. I like to think about this in terms of Venus. With each trend or style, I tried with the promise to be beautiful, I create acidic clouds. When being more beautiful didn’t create instant love or connection for me, the clouds rained. In turn, I created a hostile, toxic environment in my head, and around me.

This caused me to think that I wasn’t beautiful because I wasn’t loved.

I wish that this was a singular experience that I have had, but in the past two years at school, I have been doing intensive primary and secondary research on beauty, and I have found that this is something that almost everyone experiences at some point. It is crazy that so many of us create our own Venus.

I bring this up because I’ve spent the last year cleaning up my atmosphere, and creating one in which I can breathe, harness life, and grow. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love beauty and beauty trends, and I don’t think that will go away. However, I have been able to create a more objective lens when it comes to the way that I view myself, and I hope that you do too.

So, my advice is do the trends or don’t do the trends. Someone is going to love you no matter what you look like, and I hope that someone is you because you are your first and greatest love. Take time to get to know yourself. Love the way you look! Embrace your beauty! Beauty is subjective, and as a society, we will never not have beauty standards. But, remember that you create the atmosphere in which you live. Clean up your acidic clouds, and make this life something that is so wonderful to live! I hope that you realize it’s not a good thing to have Venus at home, but we can appreciate the beauty that even she brings sometimes.