Vanity: Fish Lips and Flying Machines

When Daughter #1 was a little girl, we picked up an old, vintage vanity table for her to use as a desk. She sat there and colored with her crayons and worked on her homework. I spray painted it black and trimmed it in gold. I wasn’t necessarily very crafty back in those days. Look at this one…isn’t it gorgeous? When Daughter #2 came along, she inherited the vanity and then somewhere along the way, it was sent on to make someone else happy.

I never really thought of connecting the word vanity the furniture and vanity the character trait, although that is precisely where this particular piece of bedroom and bathroom furniture got its name. It was used for personal grooming. When we were in school, we learned about vanity in the form of Narcissus from Greek mythology. He was a hunter who refused all romantic advances and fell in love with his own reflection in the water. He stared at it the remainder of his life.

When I was young, vanity was discouraged as unladylike. It fits in with the pride and envy and even lust, gluttony, and sloth of the seven deadly sins. I remember going through a period as a tween when I stared at my perceived imperfections in the mirror. I remember when I started dating, I spent an inordinate amount of time on my hair and makeup. But still…I never could have imagined a time when young girls would have a portable telephone glued to their hands and take countless…COUNTLESS photos of themselves pursing their lips like pouty toddlers in drag.

I don’t get it. Maybe it’s because I’m pushing seventy. Maybe it’s because I’m just not hip to the realities of youth today. I mean, I take selfies occasionally to use as profile pictures on my blog or other social media. I have fun with the kids using filters and sending funny photos back and forth. But to sit and take pictures of myself over and over and over? I haven’t changed much since yesterday…why do I need twelve more poses with kissy lips and enough makeup to kill Tammy Fay Baker?

Our society has become so incredibly self centered. I think it all started with Dr. Spock and his instruction not to spank your kids. Before we knew it, we were handing out trophies just for showing up and no one learned how to lose. Well, those trophy kids have grown up and become gazillionaires and now they practice vanity by shooting themselves and their rich friends up into space on rockets (that may or may not be an over compensation for a small…you know what)…simply because they can.

Yeah, yeah…I know. Space exploration and advancing technology is not a bad thing. (And, here I’m going to say something that I SWORE I’d never say!) Back in MY day (OY…I said it!) the uber wealthy built things like massive buildings and libraries and artistic venues like concert halls and museums and ball fields. They didn’t blow the entire worth of Jamaica on an imaginary town square called Twitter where lies are peddled like M&M’s and grown people fight like sixth graders.

I do not know how to put the genie back in the bottle. I don’t think we can. It’s gone WAY beyond that now. But I do truly pray something changes before we’re warned not to look back or we’ll be turned into a pillar of salt.

There’s good out there….but dang, sometimes the bad tips the scale way too far. Or, maybe it’s just the lies on social media trying to mess with our heads. All I know is, I look for the good everywhere I turn because it IS out there. And the more I look for it, the more I see. And the more I see, the more encouraged I am to share even MORE goodness. And the more goodness that’s out there in the world, the more it grows.

In the meantime, I sit around the campfire with Jesus and hope for the best.