| My
14-year-old-stepdaughter has rather graciously--and completely
inadvertently--provided me with a wonderful illustration of the power of
vanity over the last couple of years. When I first met her almost
three years ago, she had no vanity to speak of. She was still a kid
and she enjoyed things; she didn't care at all about things like clothing
brand names or whether she was seen wearing certain jackets. She
wore what she liked, and she didn't worry about what other people liked or
didn't.
Unfortunately
for her (and her mom and me), that has all changed in the last couple of
years. She's become so caught up in what she's wearing and how she
looks that she's caused herself many miserable moments and hours, and has
caused those around her a great deal of frustration and annoyance.
If she gets a new shirt, it has to be a certain brand name or she mopes
around for hours sometimes. She's deliberately disobeyed her mother's
order to wear a heavy winter coat on a day that was below zero, because
it's somehow not cool to be wearing a heavy coat--she wanted to wear her
windbreaker. She was willing to risk getting sick and to be
extremely uncomfortable just because of what she thought her friends would
think of her.
Just two years
ago, she was very outspoken in criticizing the older girls who were doing
exactly what she's doing now.
Don't
get me wrong--she's a great kid, with many wonderful traits. But her
vanity has gotten in the way of her relationships with others, and at
times it's almost unbearable to be with her. Even the way she talks
has changed--she's more willing to use words like "geek" and
"nerd" to describe people who don't dress as "cool" as she does,
and she's effectively closed off the possibility of contact with a large
number of people. It's very sad to watch, and we can only hope that
she'll grow out of this phase soon.
I know many
adults who do the same thing--they're so caught up in the way they look
that they obsess about their clothing and their hair and their
make-up. They spend hours on these things when a few minutes a day
would do. They've bought into the idea that looks are everything,
and they're doing their best to impress others with the way they
look. And they accomplish that in the short run. They're
missing the bigger picture, though. Most people see through the
looks and the clothing rather quickly, and realize that they're dealing
with people who aren't addressing the substantive part of their lives,
people who are so caught up with the outside that they're neglecting the
inside. They're unhappy and stressed out if they don't look just
right (and sometimes even if they do), and they're much more likely to
lose their peace of mind over a stained dress or shirt or coat than other
people who may attend closely to their looks, but who don't make them the
major focal point of their lives.
The
other side of vanity is the false impression that one gets of oneself
because of their exaggerated evaluation of themselves and their looks
and/or abilities. They may be constantly in the company of admirers
or wanna-be's, but they fail to acknowledge the fact that these people
around them are in serious need of help to find their own
identities. The vain person is at best annoying, at worst, useless
to others. There's a certain arrogance that comes with vanity, and
that arrogance keeps the vain person from seeing the needs of those around
them. While they may be quite happy about themselves, that happiness
comes at a cost. Self-satisfaction on one level can keep us from
trying to improve other aspects of our lives. How many of the
high-school beauty queens end up not even going to college or trying to
start a career, for they've let their vanity carry them through their
high-school years, and haven't done a thing to try to improve their minds
or cultivate friendships?
The vain person
is to be pitied, for that person has a very unrealistic perception of just
who he or she is. That person may bask in the admiration that comes
because of his or her looks or clothes, but that admiration is fleeting
and insincere. The bottom line is that the person is a human being,
with wants and needs and desires just like the rest of us. That
person needs to learn about him or herself and about life, but is probably
neglecting both areas. Other people have heaped praise upon the
person about one aspect of his or her life, and that person has focused
all his or her energy on that one aspect. Their feelings of success,
their self-esteem, their feelings of accomplishment all stem from that one
aspect of themselves. And we all know what happens when that one
aspect goes bad. |
