An Old Entry

Since I’m too lazy to blog, I decided to post up one of my old entries from my previous blog. I did some editing like rephrasing, re-structuring of some sentences and adding some words, but the content essentially remains the same. So you could say that this entry is the 2nd edition.

The other day in my secondary school's channel, one of my friends said that being ugly is a sin. I laughed at first but said that he shouldn't always put looks as the number one thing when looking at girls. After that, a friendly debate in the channel began. Around 3 or 4 of my friends took to the view that looks must be the number one thing, while only another girl and I took the other side of the coin. So, do looks really matter?

Well, to me, it's simple. Looks are important but not essential.

Let me explain. Now, when it comes to love, there are actually 4 different types of love. The first kind of love is the one between friends. The second is between relatives or family. Romantic love, or Eros, the love between a man and a woman, is the third. Finally, the last one, Agape, unconditional love, is the highest kind of love.

Now the kind of love we're talking about here is Eros, romantic love. Love between a man and a woman. Now sexual attraction is part of romantic love, so naturally we have to be attracted to our partner. After all, looks one of the first things that we notice about a person and so often the basis the world judges you upon. One of my friends in the channel said that if looks don't matter, "might as well marry pig". That’s true. Because if something doesn’t matter to you, it means you don’t care about it and holds no value what so ever. On the other hand, if you do care about something, that particular thing holds value and means something to you.

That’s why I say that looks are important.

Now don't get me wrong, I said that looks are important but I also said that looks weren’t essential. That means that they shouldn't be the number one thing you look for in someone of the opposite sex and the fundamental basis upon which a relationship is built. Looks are superficial and if we all picked our partners just based on that, the relationship would only last as long as the next better-looking person comes along. Looks are part of the physical attributes of a person. We should look at a person as a whole and not by each part (like his physical attributes) individually.

If you ask me what I think are the most important features in a partner, I'd say character, personality, looks, in that order. Personality can change over time and circumstances, but character is something that hardly ever changes at all. If I had to make a choice, I'd choose someone with good character and an alright personality rather than someone with a great personality but questionable character. Now when it comes to looks against character, here's my say and I might as well end on this note:

Looks are what attract but eventually it is a person's character that makes the biggest impact on the relationship.