Appearance

Appearance (noun) “the way that someone or something looks to other people. ”  Cambridge Dictionary

The word  “appearance” has an etymology that took it from Old French, through Latin and into Middle English to give us its present form. It has several meanings, both denotative and connotative, and it also appears in a number of idiomatic forms, but I have chosen to focus on the clear and easily understood  dictionary meaning given above since it best serves my purpose.

I have a game that I play with words, often as a sleep-aid. I try to make as many words as possible out of a single word, no proper nouns, and using each letter only once. When I do this with “appearance,” I come up with about 20 words hidden in it. There’s more to the word than meets the eye.

In my book Myra’s Calling, Myra and her friend Sandra are at a poolside party at a Jamaican hotel, both of them watching several of the guests dip under a limbo pole with little success, but it seems like fun.  Myra urges Sandra to have a go at shimmying up to the limbo pole. Sandra’s response? “I’m not as stupid as I look.” Sandra’s self-deprecating quip makes an important point. We tend to see people differently from the way they really are. We are sidetracked by appearance.

By  looking at only outward appearance, we run the risk of  being dismissive of an individual’s more important  self. A number of years ago, I attended a week-long women’s conference at a university in Michigan. One of the evening lectures brought a group of us women face-to-face with our penchant for judging on appearance. The program listing promised a lecture on anthropological findings about women’s roles in medieval society. The lecturer got a massive build-up in the introduction, but when she got up to speak, some of us, dressed to impress as we were, looked at the woman and then looked at one another with raised eyebrows, accompanied by smirks.  We were floored by her appearance–seemingly doddering and dowdy in an ill-fitting print frock.  One attendee close-by said loudly enough for the rest of us to hear, “She looks catatonic.” More giggles and smirks. Then the esteemed anthropologist began her lecture. Our jaws dropped. The lecture hall went silent, most noticeably so in our section. When the presentation was over, we sat there awestruck. For the remainder of the conference, we became her groupies, and we talked about her with admiration long after the conference ended.

We humans are adept at looking at appearance, ignoring what is beneath the surface, and there is always something beneath the surface, no matter who the person is.  Why do we rely so much on appearance to make up our minds about others? Author Somerset Maugham suggests a reason. “It is not by observance as we really are that we judge others, but by an image we have formed  of ourselves from which we have left out everything that offends our vanity or would discredit us in the eyes of the world.”  Wow!  Is it our vanity that is at work? Evidently, we peel away the unflattering and the undesirable qualities from ourselves so as to make what remains look good enough for us to see others in a lesser light.

What others look like seems to matter a great deal to a lot to people. When they look at others, they see difference and won’t allow themselves to see beyond the difference. They  look from a preconceived image of themselves. We can get good service in an upscale department store, depending on a sales clerk’s perception of us as a potential customer. The same goes for service in a five-star restaurant, depending on what we appear to be in the eyes of the maître d’. After an interview, we can be told, “We have nothing right now. We’ll get back to you,” depending on what we look like, never mind that we might have all the skills necessary for the position.

In an age that touts diversity, this myopic approach goes against what advocates for the disabled, the aged, the mentally challenged, the refugee and so many more are trying to get us to do–to look beyond mere appearance. Our sensitivities must be mature enough for us to look out of eyes that see past skin color, or hair color, or the size of an individual’s waistline. It is true that there are times when we look past appearance to who someone else really is and we are disappointed, but that is a chance we must take in order to place the right value on others when we look at them.

Judging  by looking only at the superficial aspects  of others is not new. The biblical incident about the prophet Samuel going to choose a replacement king for Israel is quite instructive. The prophet looked for external features only and thought he had his man–more than once as several sons were paraded before him. But he made the wrong call. Heaven’s eyes saw things differently and told Samuel,  “Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.” So Samuel finally chose a youngster that didn’t look like much and made him king because he had what it took on the inside. In our dealings with others, we do well to go beyond appearance and look for what poet Gerard Manley Hopkins calls “the deep down things.” They are the ones that really matter.

Blessings,

Judith

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

GOOD NEWS!

Check out  my guest blog today, Wednesday, May 30 on Southern Writers Magazine’s Suite T  I think you’ll find it interesting. JN