Daring Greatly

It is not the critic who counts;not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;who strives valiantly;who errs and comes short again and again;who knows great enthusiasms,the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while DARING GREATLY so that his place shall never be with those timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

-Theodore Roosevelt 26th President Of The United States

Appearance Discrimination

I came across this great post about height/weight appearance discrimination on the internet:

"We live in a world in which we are constantly judged by our appearance despite the ideal "judgment by merit." People we pass by in a crowded city will size us up and immediately form an idea in their head of whom they think we are in less than two seconds; often times, this idea is completely wrong, as many people judge solely on a few factors of a person's appearance.Either way, there are several cases in which it is blatantly wrong to be judged by your appearance, yet most people probably do it every single day.

Why? Think of it this way: Human beings are afraid of the unknown. If a person thinks he or she knows who you are, even if that thought is completely wrong, then he or she will feel more secure for the moment. One of the most common attributes I've seen people be judged by is their height. For one reason or another, many tall and average-sized people seem to have it in their heads that people who aren't quite as tall as them are somehow "inferior" to them. Folks, a person cannot control his or her height; tall people didn't "earn" their height, and shorter people weren't "unqualified" for it. Now, this is a problem that is usually common in men; after all, many girls like to date the tall guys, so the short guys are automatically taken out of the dating pool for no good reason. Additionally, people seem to have it in their heads that tall people are better athletes, and while having more height gives you an advantage in basketball, a tall person isn't a better tennis player than a short person. When coaches use this mentality, many smaller kids are cast aside before the second round of try-outs.

People are also judged by their weight. Again, even though a significant portion of the world is overweight, society seems to believe that it is okay to discriminate against obese people. Fat jokes are one thing; sometimes, though, someone will not want to associate with someone who's overweight. I've seen it happen before, and I was greatly appalled. Just as it makes no sense to judge someone by his or her height, it doesn't make sense to judge someone by his or her weight. You don't know that the person is too lazy to exercise; maybe it's a genetic thing. And your weight has nothing to do with your personality, so you really can't judge an overweight person until he or she actually talks to you; however, the damage done seems to be irreversible, and obese people may never get a fair shake in this world."

The don't judge a book by its cover adage is rarely put into daily practice. I try very hard to be mindful of appearance based discrimination and I actively work towards eliminating these prejudgments from my own life.

Please give this some thought.