Marilyn is a beautiful woman I’ve just gotten to know.

She isn’t beautiful on the outside. In fact, when you look at her you get the immediate impression she’s a little strange, at least when it comes to appearance. I don’t know how old she is. Somewhere upward of 62, I would guess. Most times she puts her blond hair into pigtails, then tops it with an odd hat of some sort.She dresses in layers of unmatched clothes I won’t even begin to describe. But let’s just say she looks like she went to her closet (or someone’s closet) and put on everything she saw there.I see Marilyn each week at a dance that is attended mostly by couples. Undeterred by that fact, Marilyn goes out on the dance floor and dances by herself.I see people rolling their eyes when they watch her uninhibited dancing. I guess they see “strange” when they look at her. I see courage.During a short conversation I had with her, Marilyn told me she lives by herself and gets rather lonely.“I have two choices,” she told me. “I can sit home alone and be lonely, or I can go out and dance by myself.”She lives close to our wonderful Cultural Center, where she attends all the free events by herself rather than staying home alone, she said.I admired her courage to do that. Sooner or later, many of us end up alone. If we don’t have a circle of friends to do things with, we can’t help but be overwhelmed with loneliness if we are alone day and night.How many of us would have Marilyn’s courage?I’ve thought about it and I’ve concluded I would like the courage to go dancing by myself — if that’s all I had available to me. But I wouldn’t have Marilyn’s courage.Two weeks ago my husband and I went to a dance at an outdoor pavilion where every seat was taken and it was standing room only — if you could find room to stand, that is.Marilyn was sitting at a table and immediately made room for me to sit by her. That’s when I discovered she is one beautiful lady, maybe not on the outside but certainly on the inside.When she saw an old man who could barely walk struggling to get to the men’s room, she went over and took his arm to help him.“The ground is so uneven and I didn’t want him to fall,” she told me.What I discovered about her is that Marilyn has a caring heart and always watches out for others.The old fellow she helped was so touched by her kindness that he brought her a heart-shaped box of candy the following week. It turns out this guy, who looks about 90, lives in a nearby nursing home. Once a week they drop him off at the outdoor pavilion to listen to music.“But the old guy can barely walk and no one stays with him. I think we have to care about others,” Marilyn says.When the old guy asked Marilyn if she would dance with him, she knew he couldn’t maneuver around the dance floor. So she “danced” with him by his chair, just swaying to the music without moving much.The look of sheer joy and contentment on the old man’s face brought tears to my eyes.What struck me that night was the contrast between Marilyn and me. While she sat there concerned about others, my only thought was whether the band would play a rumba or waltz so we could dance.I didn’t even look around to see who was there because David and I focused only on the music, thinking only of ourselves.I told another friend of mine that if I ever hear anyone making fun of Marilyn again, I was going to let them know she has more of the right stuff on the inside than the rest of us do.“Well, I should hope you would not let anyone make fun of another person — no matter who it is,” said my friend who would never tolerate hearing an unkind word about others.We all sometimes are guilty of judging by appearances, aren’t we?If we see a stunning woman dressed to the nines, we might think she’s beautiful.If we see someone shabbily dressed without much thought to appearance, we probably wouldn’t call that person beautiful.Yet the real beauty that truly counts is what’s on the inside of someone.The homeless guy who put a few crumpled-up dollar bills into a collection basket for our county soup kitchen is beautiful. I’m sure he needed the money for himself, but he said he wanted to help those who are worse off than he is.Now, that’s beautiful.My friend Jeanne encountered a beautiful young man when she went on a trip to Thailand then forgot her wallet in a jitney. With no credit card, cash or passport, she would have been in trouble.But when she got back to her hotel that night, the young jitney driver had gone through a lot of trouble to track her down and had delivered her wallet to the hotel — with not a thing missing.This is in praise of all the truly beautiful people in our world.Contact Pattie Mihalik at

newsgirl@comcast.net.