Picasso May Have Been On To Something

My seven year old just named his thumb Bobby.  If all goes well, Bobby will still be with us in the morning.  Just another brilliant tactic to get him to stop sucking his thumb.  Bobby is really nothing more than a happy face drawn on his left thumb.  If Bobby hasn't vanished by morning, we will be able to progress into some very expensive orthodontics.  If he is wiped out in the night, then we may have to go the route of the British and consider a mouth where one has all of one's teeth 'tolerable' despite the fact of the order or arrangement. 

This brings me to another thought; why do we long for symmetry?  Or better still, why do we find symmetry attractive, when it is so rarely found on its own?  I read once that when we find someone attractive, like a movie star, the reason has more to do with the symmetry of their features than the perfection of them.  Eyes don't need to be stunning, noses can me a bit large as long as all the features are perfectly symmetrical.  Something in our brain registers this as pleasant.  This is really quite a shame, I mean life would be so much simpler if we all saw the world as Picasso.  Granted, I believe his perspective was caused by a some awful sexually transmitted disease, but still how nice to see beauty in the bizarre or distorted.  Things would be quite reversed.  Instead of everyone trying to line things up perfectly, so they can be socially acceptable, most of us would be Adonises and the few that remained would be desperately trying to find ways to distort their evenness.  Which then brings up the idea that we feel the need to change to be accepted.  And, finally why do we want to be accepted based on our outward appearance? 

Actually, at this point in my life I don't want to be accepted at all.  Because, with acceptance comes responsibility and I have more than my share of that at the moment.  I can't change my now symmetrical teeth, but I can at least maintain my Picassoesque personality, in hopes that the asymmetricalness of it all continues to keep the world at bay.