Time Marches On And Sooner Or Later You Realize It's Marching Across Your Face

This is one of my favorite lines from "Steel Magnolias". That one and "the only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to accessorize." Both of these lines, in their own way, pertain to my topic today. And that topic is about an obsession with superficiality at the expense of substance.

It seems to me that people care more about how they, and others, look than about how they behave. They care more about how something is said than they do about what is said. They care more about how something appears than about how it actually is. In a government by the people this is dangerous and sad.

We live in a time where our outward appearance is our first priority and our inner beauty runs a far distant second. If even that. I'm not saying that we shouldn't take care of ourselves, or take pride in how we look, but we should also take care of who we are. There's nothing at all wrong with dying your hair, whitening your teeth, moisturizing your skin and working out, but there must be more to us than that. It frightens me to death that more people in the US recognize Paris Hilton than Joe Biden. It frightens me that people who voted for Obama thought Sarah Palin was his running mate. It frightens me that people listen to the rhetoric of a speech but not it's content. It frightens me that some people don't listen at all. Basically, I'm one very scared spinster. Thank God I have the cats to protect me.

It is our responsibility as citizens, our duty as overseers of our government, to look past the surface, whether it be the glitz of flowery speech or the dull reflection of a dry one, and really hear what is being said. To think about what was said and come to our own conclusions. But to come to a conclusion we must think, and we must see, and we must hear. And we must talk about it with others. We will not all come to the same conclusions, and this is what makes this country great. I don't demand that everybody see things my way, but I do ask that they see.

I know, considering that this is a political blog, that I am probably preaching to the choir. Those of you who read blogs such as mine are already more substance that superficiality driven and I applaud you for that. But I just had to vent anyway. Thank you for listening.