Vanity, Vanity

I called a friend today, and after chatting about his insomnia and our mutual affection for certain philosophers, he hit me with something surprising: “well yeah; that’s because we’re both vain people.”

It hit me hard, in the way I think fraternal correction ought. There was no accusation; rather, there was a sort of mutual condemnation—even if unintended—a verbal enactment of that reality we all ought to meditate upon: that I (each of us to ourselves) is the first among sinners.

The context was mundane enough: he was discussing a nerve pain he’s been having as a result of overwork and under-sleep. I responded that I’d trade him. I’ve been dealing with an early-stage varicose vein in my leg, the sort of thing my mother struggled with for years. I was joking, but he was right: my offer was vain. I would’ve preferred actual, stinging pain to a slightly-prominent blue line on the back of my calf, a mere visual inconvenience (and who is seeing, or wants to see, my hairy legs in the winter anyway?).

But he got me thinking, pondering the nature of vanity as such. It’s true that we all, to some degree or other, worry about our appearances—few dare adopt the habit of destitution and worldly ugliness (I am reminded of a priest once telling me a bag lady used to come into his parish, years ago. That woman, draped in rags, carrying crammed-full shopping bags was no homeless person—it was Dorothy Day). Even the “ugly” styles of architecture and fashion so many of us can’t help but roll our eyes at, are, in some sense, intended to stand out, to strike the viewer and intimate “hipness,” “popularity,” or even just plain being cool. I spend enough time in and around Brooklyn that I feel confident in saying one person’s ugly is another person’s hip-as-hell bangs and denim sack-shirt.

And that, that gets to the point: vanity is not merely some personal desire to be beautiful, or even merely an elevation of oneself (though it is that too). At bottom, vanity is about concern with the opinions of others to the detriment of what is good, true, and right. Whether intended or not, this is what my friend was getting at. My obsession is not, generally, with my own appearance, but I am easily peer-pressured, always concerned to make myself amenable, liked—and thus in a sense—central.

Is this not what Qoheleth means in the cryptic opening to Ecclesiastes?
The words of David’s son, Qoheleth, king in Jerusalem:
Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth,
vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!
What profit have we from all the toil
which we toil at under the sun?
One generation departs and another generation comes,
but the world forever stays.
The sun rises and the sun sets;
then it presses on to the place where it rises.
Shifting south, then north,
back and forth shifts the wind, constantly shifting its course.
(Ecclesiastes 1:1-6)