We think of vanity as a bottomless pit.
Solomon’s royal service manual (Ecclesiastes) starts out announcing that our human existence is vanity. The translation could as easily be meaningless, pointless or futile. The root meaning of the English word “vanity” is from the the Latin for emptiness, commonly used to describe someone who is self-absorbed. We know from studies in human behavior that self-absorption is the standard response to a sense of emptiness inside.
You expect that from children, who really are empty receptacles in many ways. They need to fill up the measure of self and discover who they are. It’s not as if just anything can be poured in; that’s a Western myth. Try as you might, some of what you pour into your child’s life from your own reservoir isn’t going to stay. They simply do not have the hooks to match yours, and the variations are endless. On the other hand, they would have a hard time getting something you can’t offer them.
So at some point they begin to model instinctively outside the home. The ambient culture also has limited offerings, and some social cultures are much poorer than others. Some only seem so, but that’s for another day. The whole point behind having a culture with it’s body of mythology is to provide such content, whatever it may be. The biggest problem comes when the family and culture offer a serious mismatch to the individual need.
That’s not meant to damn the culture, because some folks are pretty twisted from birth. For whatever reason, they don’t match very well to their native environment and this manifests in all sorts of issues. A primary manifestation of this mismatch is self-absorption. The individual perceives a significant sense of emptiness or hunger, often linked to a sense of insecurity. Sad is the culture that teaches people to hide this instead of trying to answer the need.
Part of the concept of vanity includes the physical equipment people use to feed their vanity. Notice I don’t suggest that it feeds the actually need, but rather keeps the vanity itself alive. We use the term “vanity” for dressing tables and other furnishings that serve a person’s vanity. In a fitness gym there are mirrors everywhere, covering whole walls from floor to over head-height. It allows people to focus on their movements for the greatest effect, in part because fitness is defined largely in terms of bodybuilding. It’s all about how the body appears, and only secondarily a matter of actual health. For example, power lifters have little use for mirrors; it’s all about the weight.
Both groups might indulge in various forms of substance abuse to gain advantages. We have people willing to take serious health risks for the sake of gaining a physical power or appearance defined by social ideals. But such mirrors have other uses.
It’s quite possible to be fulfilled enough that you have nowhere else to look but outward. A critical element in Christian belief is the image of self-denial. It doesn’t work too well as a discipline, but it’s a real treat when it reflects a change in character. The whole idea is that you really aren’t that interested in yourself because you have no burning, itching needs. Not so much that all your human emptiness is filled, but that you allow some elements of your human nature to wither and die so that you no long sense that deep hunger. There are people like that. Ever meet those weird people who don’t seem to have a care in the world? Some actually don’t have any cares.
So the gym mirrors can serve as a tool for watching others. That need not have a totally high moral objective, as anyone is likely to imagine in an environment where people wear scant clothing and tend to be working on making their bodies sexy by some standard. Still, it’s amusing to note that many of those hefting weights in front of mirrors don’t much notice others watching them in the mirror. And you can observe other behaviors that way, too. You can watch people watching others.
Most people in the gym don’t get what I’m doing. A fit appearance is an unavoidable by-product of my real aim, which is more at endurance with a measure of added power. My objective is to improve my Kingdom service, an answer to my sense of calling. I’m not holy and wonderful, but there aren’t that many who share my internal motivations. It’s best for me if folks don’t actually notice me at all, but allow me to watch them. I’m still quite alien to my environment, but I don’t feel empty, so while I’m lifting those weights a part of my mind wanders to see what others are doing.
I admit my flesh gets in on this, and there are females using the same equipment among the men. However, real humans are far more complex than any one thread of consciousness. So when I catch the fine young filly watching me, you can assume my internal reaction is not that simple. I certainly don’t assume her thoughts are all that simple, only that she pays way more attention to me than I think is warranted.
There are seriously better built men there, most of them are younger and plenty are more handsome in the face. Who knows what she’s thinking; it could as easily be that paradoxical eyes drawn to something repulsive and can’t look away sort of thing. That would be funny, not insulting to me. But I doubt it because she does speak a few polite pleasantries to me. One would hardly call it flirting. In times past, I would gush and overreact; I know what it’s like to be empty. Thank God, I’m healed of that, so I don’t pretend to myself that she wants me or anything like that. What she might want is subject to all the same complexities as any other human, and I’m not trying to figure it out. Fortunately for me, my libido has been nearly dead for some years, so it’s not something I have to fight. What she might or might not want is not the issue. What matters is how I can serve her moral needs within my calling.
That’s what I really want, and it’s what drives me in dealing with everyone else in the gym or any other place I go. I won’t lie and suggest there is no element of vanity lurking in my soul, but that I am in a good position to deny its vote in how I operate. I’ve been sensitized to it and blessed with some good understanding of how to keep it in check.
Here’s a parable: Imagine some indefinable power from outer space that comes over you, rather like an impossible to understand symbiotic life form. You know it’s there, but you know nothing about it. Over a period of time, it’s presence so changes you that your very awareness is not human by typical definitions. There are overlapping elements, but something fundamental has changed. You become the sort of person that no one can really know because you are able to calibrate and adjust to the context in ways you can’t even explain. You don’t act the same in every environment except that you are unnoticed by most people. Only a precious few even realize you are there, because they sense a hunger for that same alien influence.
Human vanity does have a bottom; it’s just that humans can’t reach it alone.
