There is more to a person than meets the eye

traditional way as African people of imparting values to the youngsters. The stories, apart from developing listening skills, helped children to distinguish between the good and the bad.
I recall sitting around a fire in my grandmother’s hut listening to stories from our elders. One of my favourite stories was about the animals of the forest that came together in time of drought in a bid to find solutions to the water crisis.
They all agreed to dig a well. The big animals trusting in their size and might dominated the process. A day, two days and more days went by but there was no water.
The task was bigger than they had imagined and therefore it was no work for animals like the frog. Pleas from the frog to try his hand at digging were scoffed at. To cut a long story short it was the frog that was able to bring out water.
The moral of the story is there is more to a person than sees the eye. The Shona people have an adage “Gudo kuipa kuipa zvaro asi haridyi chafa chega” (Though the baboon is ugly it does not eat something that has died on its own).
I really marvel at the wisdom of our elders who threw a word of caution to a world that evaluates people on the basis of physical appearance.
The English also say “Do not judge a book by its cover.” The cover does not really say much about contents.
Many times we often hear words like tall, short, beautiful, ugly, fat, slim, smart, and shabby in reference to others. Yet there is more to a person than sees the eye.
A friend of mine summed up this better when she referred to how as young girls they tended to fall for outward appearance and a person’s abilities instead of considering a person’s potential.
She said we really did not know what to look for in the boys that we dated. She discounted all the standards, tall, slim and handsome, that seemed important then as just seasoning and not the main criteria.
By potential I guess she was referring to the prospects that might not be obvious then.
The character also comes in as it shows the substance a person is made of.
We talk about the rich and the poor, the educated and the so educated and tend to assign value to people based on these categories.
I have often said culture provides lenses of perception and standards of evaluation.
In today’s world physical appearance is indeed a yardstick for evaluation. Physical appearance creates the first impressions. Important though, I believe it should not be the sole basis of judging a person. People spend millions of dollars and long hours on beauty treatments.
There is so much that is done in the name of beauty, bleaching of skin, face lifts, and adding artificial something to the hair, eye lashes, hips, nails and so forth. You can sense the insatiable hunger for beauty.
People are searching for something that I think is elusive. Each day one has to keep up appearances or else for women, as Elijah Madzikatire says, will cost them the man in their life.
In one of his songs the musician asks the question to a woman who has slackened on upkeep, “Ko kuchena kwehumhandara makaisepiko mhai . . . munosiiwa makatemba shuwa makatemba.” As he asks this question he tells the wife that she will be abandoned by the husband probably for another woman who is always up to scratch with her appearance.
The world tends to be amenable to beautiful people. It is easier for the beautiful ones to sail past hurdles that normally bring others to their knees. There are people who have been suspected of being thieves or witches because they are considered ugly or they are not so presentable.
Have you ever noticed how a smartly dressed person is shown to the highest seat at a function while the not so presentable are ignored totally.
Yet some of these impressive people are guilty of certain misdemeanours that you cannot imagine. Does physical appearance tell the whole story about a person? Should it be the basis for evaluating the worthiness of a person? I recall an incident that happened a long time ago when I was growing up in my mother’s house.
A young man, short, smartly dressed and soft spoken knocked on our door. I must say he was very pleasant. He said he was from a neighbouring village down in the rural areas (kumusha).
After he left we soon discovered that we had been duped, we had lost our hard earned dollar. Who would have suspected such a gentleman would be a conman? I believe there are many out there who identify with my family. Surprisingly we continue to use the same yardstick in our evaluations of people. The biblical standard of evaluation is the heart, as Scripture says God looks at the heart.
Reading from Isaiah 52 on the servant of the Lord, whom I presumed to be Jesus Christ, was surprised that many were appalled by him and that he was disfigured beyond human likeness.
Yet this man made a huge difference in the lives of many during his time on earth and over 2000 years after his death. Outward appearance does not endure it fades away. Therefore we need to look beyond what sees the eye.
A person is about character (hunhu) absence of which makes us into some creatures and not people. As we appraise others let us remember that there is more to a person than sees the eye.
I believe there is value in every person regardless of social status or physical appearance.
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