Always Looking

We’re always looking for a reason to be happy, to be proud, to be healthy, to be rich or to be important. Vanity is ingrained in our souls like a lullaby that keeps coming back to our mind. Good or bad? It really depends on how we channel this deep human need.

Peacocks and turkeys don’t really have a choice but to strut about with their feathers spread out at times. It’s their way of perhaps cooling down their bodies or attracting their mates. So humans have no more choice than to feel enough pride in their own God-given beauty or abilities. Not to do so would be unnatural. The defining word of course is “enough”. Vanity may refer to sick pride or too much focus on the self. Always looking at the self. Always asking for the self. Always wanting to see. Always wanting to be seen.

Vanity of vanities! That is the litany of those who have spent too much time pleasing the self only to realize they have wasted their lives. Good if we get to that point when we shed off the extra or unnecessary clothes or shoes. Or when we throw away (or sell) those things that are more of burdens than blessings in life. Like an old, sentimental car that costs more to maintain and even more to run.

Yes, oftentimes the initial happiness we feel merely comes from the simple need to be comfortable in life. But when that happiness sets in and does not progress into something that we truly feel we can share with others, it soon becomes a kind of master and not a servant. Obsessive wanting of things becomes loving things, loving the world. Happiness becomes the motive for living and not the by-product of it.

So what should be our motive or purpose for living? The vainest person who ever lived put it this way in Ecclesiastes 12:13: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.

Apparently, there is no joy in fulfilling our duty. Of course not! What we do will never bring us contentment. Why do we keep looking into the mirror? Because we are never satisfied with how we look. Or how we feel. Happiness or joy is what God does or gives to us. Knowing Him leads to that. And joy leads us to honor Him and to do His will. Imagine what God can do with joyful servants.

Somewhere in between knowing ourselves and knowing God is a kind of peaceful joy that ends our restless longings.