What Susan Boyle teaches us

By now if you haven't heard of Susan Boyle, you have been living under a rock. The 47-year old Scot who has unfortunately not been blessed in the looks department, has been handsomely compensated otherwise with a voice that puts a lump in your throat everytime you hear her sing.

When she stepped on to the stage of Britain's Got Talent, everybody in the audience wrote her off. There is a shot in the Youtube video of a young female audience member rolling her eyes probably thinking "she is ugly so she must suck at singing." It appears the judges felt the same.

And then she let her voice out and we all received a wakeup call. Each and every one of us who has been programmed to think that only good looking people are talented. Certainly that is how the entertainment mags make it seem. And face it, we love watching good looking people in our movies and television.

But in doing so, we close ourselves off from the Susan Boyles of the world. We deny ourselves the joy of hearing heavenly voices simply for our superficial tendencies. We're all guilty of it or at least a huge majority of us.

Susan Boyle has put the emphasis back on raw talent. The show has the word talent in it. I don't see the word beauty anywhere.