As I made one of my favorite foods, fresh guacamole, I caught myself thinking how something that looks rather ugly on the outside, Avocado, can yield something so yummy on the inside. The butter-soft deliciousness of freshly cut avocado is unmatched. And, the very next thought was a memory coming alive, that of a story titled Handsome Is What Handsome Does, that I read as an elementary school kid, many years ago. The story was about a deer drinking water in a pond in the jungle and seeing its own reflection in the water. He admired his antlers and was critical of his spindly legs and ugly hoofs. Suddenly, a lion comes to the watering hole and seems interested in attacking the deer, eyeing it hungrily. The deer takes off at great speed to escape. His antlers get stuck in the low hanging branches of a tree, putting his life at risk. This predicament makes him realize that the very legs he called ugly were helping him escape death while the false beauty of the antlers was putting his life in jeopardy. The moral lesson he and the readers learn is that to judge something by the way it looks is not a good idea as what it does is really what makes it handsome or ugly.
  
Glad to have remembered this story. There have been so many times in my life when I have been judged for the way I look, even as my looks changed over the years. No matter how I looked, there was always someone ready to judge it. So, I learned to just be comfortable in my own self just as I am. Do I judge? Yes, guilty as charged. I still think avocado looks ugly yet I like to see it adding its deep green gravitas to my fruit basket, in contrast with the red apples and yellow bananas. And it makes me happy that I can have a no-cook yummy meal with it as my healthy fast-food anytime.