Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/09/04/you-are-beautiful-yard-sig.html
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The sun is up, the sky is blue
It’s beautiful and so are you
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It’s easy to dismiss these messages as generic trifles and corny cliches, but seeing one can really make a difference when one is going through a difficult time. There have been times when a random statement of kindness stencilled on a wall or chalked on the pavement reminded me that we’re here to support one-another.
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Saying hello to a stranger works as well, I like to say hello to people, it’s my way of changing the world one Hello at a time.
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You’re saying hello to people right now, I dare say.
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Hello, and yes I am.
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Did you just assume my arbitrary beauty standard rating? /S (it is a nice sentiment)
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I was travelling recently and someone said a friendly hello to me. I felt like putting up my hands defensively and saying, “Whoa, whoa! I’m from Toronto!”
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Just put a comma in there. “You are beautiful, yard sign.”
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One of my kids knows the family, but I don’t. They put up a huge one of these signs years ago on southbound Lake Shore Drive near 39th Street. Every time I pass it, I can’t help but smile a little. And tell myself that of course I’m not, but it’s still sweet to experience. Very human of me.
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That works.
I think some people buy into concepts, “pay it forward” or how everyone should be friendly, but it often comes across as forced.
I changed when I realized I did have some power, that saying hello or nodding did mean something to others. So I actually do such things with meaning, though maybe not as much meaning as when I did it rarely.
It seems like a subtle interaction, connecting wiyh others who have the same sense of the world, like the time I.held a door open for a group of women coming out of a shopping mall, followed by I think a teenager who had been holding the inner door open. Suddenly a shared sense of manners.
But it can also be odd, I do things without expectation of anything coming back, but every so often it does, and it feels like I’ve gotten a bigger return than what I gave. That homeless woman I gave a donut to last year, her face lit up and I.then realized she’d smiled at me previously, me not really understanding why I could cause that. We think we are invisible, but every so often such actions tell us wr’ve been noticed even if we hadn’t noticed eatlier.
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I see stickers and graffiti of these and similar types of messages a lot here where i’m at. I am often annoyed at how cliche the messages are but i’m a cynic. I do try to be mindful about it though, at the end of the day its still a positive message and having that out there in the world can’t be all that bad. If it brightens a single person’s day it will have made a difference
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It’s frustrating because I don’t want to be a downer for everyone else, but it’s all just a reminder than this place isn’t for me, and it deepens my feeling of not belonging anywhere. But at the same time, a lawn sign that said, “Your feeling that you are not okay is probably based on an incoherent idea of what it means to be okay. If there is any real meaning to being okay, it’s hard to imagine you are not okay,” would not brighten the day of many people.
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Looking back, it took me half a lifetime to put a dent in my angst and self protective defensiveness. Even now, the “You are beautiful” sign is a beacon from a foreign land.
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I think they were traumatised by a visitor from Glasgow 25 years ago.
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