As a kid, I couldn’t wait until I turned 18. I had
it all planned out. I was going to the tattoo shop on Baltimore Avenue in
College Park, Maryland to have a treble clef tattooed on my shoulder blade. Or
was it my foot? Hmmm…Maybe it was my ankle. I can’t remember, but back then, I
was quite confident that I was going to be a professional musician and I wanted,
correction, I needed to be inked to ensure that my
goal was brought to fruition.
Evidence of tattooing dates as far back as the Neolithic era (9500 BC).
Historically, depending on the culture of the beholder, tattoos have served as
rites of passage, marks
of status and rank, symbols of religious and spiritual devotion, decorations for
bravery, sexual lures and/or marks of fertility,
pledges of love, punishment, amulets and
talismans, protection, and as the marks of outcasts, slaves and prisoners.
Tattoos even served as instruments of healing when applied to acupuncture points
on the body in some cultures. Regardless of the purpose of the tattoo, it is
common that tattoos held great significance for those who wore them. Now, in
Western culture, tattoos have gained a great deal of popularity and are
generally sought for cosmetic reasons and recognized as symbols for self
expression and the attainment of enhanced beautification. The decision to tat
or not to tat is one that nearly every individual emerging from puberty in the millenium will
consider in his or her lifetime, but does tattooing really make us more
beautiful or make the symbol, photo or concept with which one is adorned any
more significant in our lives? Why so often are we apt to change the external
to become closer to what we wish to be than the internal aspects of ourselves?
The obvious answer is that it’s easier, but is it really? Let’s closely
examine...
To get a tattoo, there are a number of steps that must be taken:
1. Identify a good tattoo parlor or artist because no one wants a sloppy
tat job.
2. Choose a design with significance that one would be willing to see on
his or her body every
day perhaps for the rest of their lives.
3. Be prepped for the application of the art.
4. Have the design outlined with ink and (if the recipient can endure the
physical pain at the time)
have the design filled through the process of
creating a wound beneath the surface layers of the
skin and penetrating the
wound with black or colored permanent ink.
5. Endure physical (and possible emotional) pain and trauma associated with the
tattoo for a short
time period, treat the wound with a special ointment and work
to avoid infection during the
healing process.
6. Finally enjoy the beautiful body art (well, at least we hope it turns out as beautifully as we
imagined) you’ve elected to have etched
onto your body.
7. Maintain your art by re-inking, adding to it, covering it or having it
removed.
So, there seem to be seven steps to undergo in effort to beautify ourselves
through tattooing. What stands out for me is the fact that in the process, one
must be willing to endure a degree of physical pain and/or discomfort for days
and in some cases even weeks and risk permanent scarring and/or infection. This forces me to ask the question, in the name of
inner beauty, why aren’t we just as likely to suffer the emotional pains of
adjustment to shift our thoughts and habits from the unhealthy to the healthy?
To begin seeing positive change in our thoughts and actions, there are three
simple steps (none of which involve any physical pain, unless you’re a masochist
and find pleasure in the pursuits of physical trauma):
1. Think a new, healthier thought.
2. Believe that what you desire for yourself is a possibility.
3. Take action that supports what you desire in your life.
Three. Simple. Steps. So why not take them? Good question. People have
the tendency to gravitate toward the familiar. They are comfortable with
predictable outcomes. What they know, they understand, and they tend to seek to
maintain this level of stability in their lives even though the very situations
that they keep themselves pinned to, they often claim to loathe. Very seldom do
people elect to stretch themselves emotionally. People have the tendency to
believe emotional hurts are far more painful and less likely to heal than
physical ones. The truth is that emotional pain is far more controllable than
physical pain. Emotional pain can be resolved by simply choosing to
change a thought. That’s right! You have a choice in the matter—to hurt or
not to hurt. You can choose to think in a way that is detrimental to your
emotional and mental health or in a manner that supports its enhancement. For example,
in step one, I can choose to believe "I am unattractive and overweight" or I
can choose to believe that "I am beautiful and fit." Once the choice is made, I
must then decide to believe (step two) that being beautiful and fit is a
realistic possibility for me. This belief can be supported by defining what
beauty and fitness mean for me and identifying action words (verbs) that I can
implement to bring to life the qualities of beauty and fitness that I believe
are possible for me. Once I’ve identified my verbs, I can take step three and
begin to act in a way that supports what I wish to be in life, beautiful and
fit. This process requires the discomfort of adjusting to the process of breaking the cycle
of habit (which may take a bit longer than it takes to be tattooed), but it
allows for a lasting change that never wrinkles, droops, sags or fades with age
or time.
So, rather than enduring the sadistic process of being tattooed to illustrate
one’s beauty, you can choose to radiate beauty or whatever quality you wish for
yourself from the inside out. All of the qualities that you wish to exude can
be illustrated by your decision to implement this three-step process.
Ultimately, the decision of what to do in lieu of that tattoo is yours. What
will it be?
A variation of this article was previously published in FACE Magazine's September 2010 issue.
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