The word of contemplation this week is Vanity. Vanity is a common trait of human nature. I believe we all have this from one degree to another. I think that vanity distorts perception. Perception depicts individual reality. Individual reality is the focused center from which our vision pears out at the world and from which we judge ourselves and ultimately from this our actions are born. But do we receive back an accurate reflection of our individual selves, and as such can we really know how the world both sees and knows us from it’s own personal experience? And more importantly does that reality, being the only true reality match our own experience of who and what we think we are? I think that maybe the only way to truly know ourselves is to live detached, or removed from this part of human nature, or in a sense surgically remove our vanity by way of using the personal objectivity of those outside of our own circles as a tool in witch to sever that part of ourselves that will and does most certainly distort what is into what we ultimately want to see ourselves, and the world to be. It is a leap of faith, but one we all must take to finely reach that place outside of fantasy land to arrive on solid ground, at the place of truth where we are handed our actual selves. All one can do at that point is to hope we have the maturity and grace to except all of that of which we really and truly are. The good, the bad and the ugly, and if we are lucky the beauty if it hasn’t been driven from us. That is if that old saying is true that we are all of us born innocent.
