Today, my coworker convinced me to go gift wrap shopping with her. Yes, that’s right, not gift, but gift wrap. You see, she wanted to find the perfect outfit for the multiple baby shower gifts she had recently bought. There we stood, side-by-side inside Hallmark, staring at the endless rows of available wrapping decor. Wrapping paper, bows, ribbons, tissue paper, bags, you name it.

I wanted to cry.

We were spending time buying something that would be tossed aside in under 3 seconds upon delivery. I wanted to tell her that it didn’t matter how fancy the wrapping was. What counted was the gift itself. By the way, the gifts weren’t that great. I told her my theory that usually, the prettier the wrapping paper, the uglier the gift. In this case, I was right on point.

It made me think about myself and some girls I knew. We spend so much time in department stores shopping for the perfect foundation, the perfect eyeliner and the perfect face cleanser. We spend time rummaging through clothes racks looking for the cutest outfit we can find. Yet, we don’t spend the same amount of time focusing on our character, our morals and our actions.

Personally, I wouldn’t want to be a fancy wrapped gift with nothing to offer inside.