Today I was in class and I decided to speak my mind because teachers like when you participate. I was raising my hand every few minutes until I started thinking: Am I dumb? How do you know if what you’re saying is dumb? How do you know if you’re that kid that keeps offering up an opinion or a thought while everyone else is groaning and thinking ‘Oh my goooooood, stop taaaaalking, no one caaaaares what you have to say’? It’s a long class, 2 hours and 45 minutes, so I had a lot of time to think about this and by the end I was thoroughly self-conscious and depressed. As I was walking home, I was thinking about how this was going to affect the rest of my day. I’m going to be in a bad mood, I thought. I’ll just have to get used to it. I’m going to criticize everything I do until I go to bed. I’m never going to speak again in class. I’m probably really dumb, I wish someone had told me before I made a fool of myself in front of so many people. This day is going to be terrible. I probably shouldn’t go out tonight if I want to save myself from embarrassment.

But then, as I was walking down Houston, a man with a video camera flagged me down.

“I’m going to take a picture of you walking,” he said in a thick French accent. (Emily would be so jealous) “It’s for my blog. I take pictures of natural beauty walking naturally in their city.” (or something)

So he instructed me to walk while he snapped some pics. Then we were talking and I smiled and he went, “You’re smiling! hold that!” and he went a few feet in front of me to take a picture of it, but by then I had forgotten what I was smiling about and I didn’t know where to look. He looked disappointed when he saw the picture that he captured and then he said something to me, magically, magnificently. He said: “You don’t need to judge yourself. Once you start judging yourself you lose your beauty. Beauty is happiness. Be in the moment. Don’t think about what you are doing or how you look. Things that make you happy are your friends, your freedom, accomplishing your goals too. Not high heels and purses. Those things don’t matter. You don’t need to be self-conscious.”

I thanked him and told him that that’s exactly what I needed to hear.