Vanity can be looked at in a dictionary as; excessive pride in one's appearance or accomplishments; conceit. What is this trait which flows through everyone’s veins? We are all guilty of it at least once in our lifetime we are all capable of feeling more important than another person. It’s in advertising and in movies, books, in every person we see daily. That vision of self over others is instilled since birth like machines being programmed to do tireless work. To define vanity one must look at the root from which it is spawned. Identity is self, or what we think the environment around us sees us as. We all inherently believe we know who we are but the first step to knowing everything is understanding we know nothing. No matter how much effort a person puts into his or her image, it’s all a fraud, psychologically speaking, because so much of our life is unconscious. As infants we are a mix of biological processes our first goal in life is to develop an understanding or coherent personality which puts together all this confusion. We build schemes during our childhood to comprehend our environment but we also learn to socially gauge other’s reactions to ourselves. Some things appeal to us more than others due in part that those same things show us what is missing in our lives. From these things that appeal to us we form an identity or image of how we see ourselves and how we want to the world to see us and others to desire us. Seeing oneself reflected in the world has a social value, of course, but it is nothing more than a vague image or shell of what we truly are. What we truly are can be seen in those scarce and rare moments where we have to choose between life or death, love or pain, fear or anger, those moments which make us embrace our true ideals. Ill put into an analogy to make easier;
A security guard walks up to these kids that are trespassing onto private property. He walks over with bravado and a swagger in his step to tell the kids to scram. Lo and behold he taps one of them on the shoulder and these “punk” kids open fire out of fear and run off. The guard uses his phone to call 911 and frantically explains he has been shot. When the police show up they noticed that he hasn’t been shot once all the shots fired missed him and other than wetting his pants he is fine.
This is an example of how he saw himself as above the teens but when they shot at him his true self or identity was revealed. We as humans go out of our way to express an identity to others. What we offer indeed is not our true selves but a self full of vanity and pride. We think we are offering gold but in reality we are offering lead. When encountering something like the security guard we don’t act according to what will “look good”, but we are forced to embrace our true selves or our deepest—and often unconscious—value system. Some people compulsively want to project a vain image an want to be desired obsessively and go their whole lives trying to fill this void. The truth is this void can never be filled and they are no better for pursuing it. This vanity or feeling of having to be better looking, smarter, or just than your fellow human is projected into advertising. Realistically everyone cannot look like those famous models which advertise lipstick that they never really wear but nonetheless people still buy the lipstick. This same advertising pushes people toward even undergoing risky plastic surgery just to look “better”. Next time you look in a mirror think of this article and ask yourself. Are you looking at yourself or something entirely different?