Médecin Sans Frontier

Last night K and I got invited by our good friend Nicola to join her at the Bloor Street Cinema to see the final flick presented at Doc Soup called Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders by director Mark Hopkins.



Filmed in the war-zones of Liberia and Congo, Living in Emergency followed the field operations of volunteer doctors of Doctors without Borders/Médecins sans Frontiers (MSF). This film was raw and a very real depictions of the dilemmas that the staff of MSF face on on a day-to-basis and the toll that it takes on the personally and professionally.

While this wasn't the feel good film of year, it was definitely mentally and soulfully stimulating making my count my lucky stars of my life and my environment.

Of the many aspects of the film that I reflected, one image really stands out in my mind; MSF veteran Chiara Lepora always seemed to be dressed up. At one point in the documentary, you see her waltzing down a delapitating street looking, as K put it, like Audrey Hepburn, wearing a shift dress with a string of pearls doubled and cascading down her back. One would think that a doctor working in the war-zones of Africa would have little energy and motivation to be considerate of how she looked. However, I think that this was a powerful image, that showed just how happy she was with her job and her life. Happy people exude how they feel wholly: by the way they interact with others, by the things they do and how they present themselves to the world.

Beauty makes us feel good and the better we feel, the more beautiful we want to be. Beauty create self-confidence and self-confidence creates the roots that we need to be good and do good.

I'm not saying that you should always care about how you look or that being beautiful means automatic happiness, but rather that feeling beautiful always adds enjoyment to life.

So go ahead, put some effort in and figure out how you can make yourself feel more beautiful. Take your mind out of the war-zone, whether to you that means the daily grind of work, the drudgery of exams or a tough situation that you are going through, and spend some time primping the outside. I promise, it will do wonders for the inside.