Life is like...painting a cedar fence

Life is like…painting a cedar fence.

Cedar emanates endless beauty throughout time. Painting the fence represents putting up a front. The paint, or front, may flaunt beauty for a time, but the paint eventually begins to crack and fade and lose its appeal. The fence must then be repainted to recreate the fronted beauty.

The painting and scraping and repainting is time consuming and unnecessary. Why then do we choose to paint the natural beauty of our fence, of our true selves? The reason to paint is to impress a certain audience. The audience could be a group of peers, a coworker, a parent, or one’s self. You may not like the way you naturally exist because you fear the perception of others. Others' perceptions, however, are often inaccurately perceived by one’s self. Be confident in yourself and who you really are and you will be beautiful.

If you paint yourself, even one time, you must undergo the necessary steps to scrape away the front and reclaim your natural beauty. The fronting process strips you from valuable opportunities to bestow your beauty to the world. You take the time to research, prep, paint, and scrape the front before returning to your natural beauty. Some people stay painted their entire lives and never have the chance to share their true beauty with the world.

Fronting is not uncommon. Most people front when searching for their true selves. They try different colors and textures to see if their fronted images match their true selves. They are unable to identify the beauty that naturally exists. They think that beauty needs to be fabricated. And, as many fronting exhibits prove, fronts can be beautiful to some eyes for certain periods of time. However, they lose their appeal with time and need to be modified or replaced.

At certain moments, people will realize that fronting requires significant work and maintenance and they choose to return to their natural beauty. The timing of this identification varies for each person. Some may realize the detriment to fronting after only a few colors, while others will paint several fronts.

Removing fronts can be challenging and may be increasingly difficult for those who have painted many coats. The more coats, the more difficult the process to recover natural beauty. The beauty of this all, however, is that your genuine beauty is not impossible to retrieve. The paint can be removed and the front can be forgotten with time.

Allow yourself to be naturally beautiful. Save your fronting energy for productive functions and you will be even more beautiful and appealing to others. Consume your energy with fronting experiments and, although your beauty may emulate for a moment, it will fade and lose appeal with time. Time has the power to enhance natural beauty and fade fronted beauty. To be truly and timelessly beautiful, maintain your natural finish.