On Thursday I went to the temple with a couple of friends, as I do every week. This week we decided to go out of our normal zone and to the Mount Timpanogos temple. When I was ~11 I went to the open house of this temple, and thought it was the most beautiful temple I'd seen and was determined to get married there. Only once had I ever returned, to do baptisms. So I was curious if I'd feel the same way when I returned this time, now that I could see the whole temple.
When we walked onto the temple grounds, my heart sang. And by that I mean beat so fast that it sent a sweet vibration through my whole circulatory system. All temples are beautiful, but somehow this one speaks to me in different way. It is not just beautiful, but gorgeous, which sounds weird for a building, but that's just how it is.Somehow the quadrilateral structure combining with feminine curves makes the whole presence of the building delicious to me.
While inside the temple, I was looking through one of the long tall windows, probably the one that's lit up in the picture. I noticed that the panels were etched with gradually curved lines that look like waves and sand on a beach. There are no real beaches in Utah, so I thought that was interesting. As I kept observing the glass on the window, I couldn't find a real pattern to the curves in the etching. Some were fat, some were close to each other, some were curving up when the one below was curving down, or some were parallel. And I thought...temples are supposed to be perfect. Why is there not a pattern? Why isn't this symmetrical?
Then I realized...since when does perfect = symmetry and symmetry = beauty? It doesn't. In nature, you can find patterns in many plants and even animals, but they are not symmetrical. Most of them follow the Fibonacci sequence, in which each number is added to the previous number in the sequence, starting with 1. So we have 1. Then 1+0 (because there is no previous number)=1. Then 1+1=2. 2+1=3. And so forth. In nature, the numbers of petals on a flower, or spirals in a snail's shell often fall on a Fibonacci number, as well as the ratios of size between sections of a plant or animal.
Not symmetrical, but beautiful. Just like all of us!
I know I've struggled immensely with having a consistently positive self-image, and many women out there do. Men do too, but not nearly as often. Well, women and men, perfection=/=beauty. So find (at least) one thing on you that is beautiful, and cherish it. Soon you'll realize there is more than one. :)
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