Fleeting Beauty

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases;
it will neverPass into nothingness…

These opening lines of John Keats’s ENDYMION: A POETIC ROMANCE seems to echo the ideal, everlasting nature of beauty.
It is, however, not always applicable in reality.
Suffice it to say that in the real (= not ideal) world, beauty don’t last.

All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall. (I Peter 1:24, NIV)

A heartbreaking example is the story of Mariana Bridi da Costa, Brazilian highly-talented top model who drew her last breath before reaching 21.
Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacterial infection took her life away in the prime of life. Even after surgeons amputated both her arms and legs – reducing her body to mere torso – and removed parts of her inner organs, the disease prevailed. Mariana died, leaving thousands of dreams and hope of becoming the world’s next beauty icon behind.
Most of us perhaps will not share the same fate that befell Mariana. But let us always keep in mind that “charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting” (Proverbs 31:30, NIV), and focus to enhance the inner, invisible qualities of our character rather than the outer, visible beauty.