Vanity

I have been thinking a lot about all kinds of things recently. One of the things that strikes me is how unimportant certain things really are. Let me rephrase that; how unimportant many things are that people think are so important. I include myself in the group of people who have thought certain things important so I am not pointing my finger at someone outside. I am looking at myself here. One of the things I think is probably overvalued is looks, how one appears. I confess to being rather shallow in this way. A person's looks should mean less than it appears to. I clearly don't pretend to be a great beauty myself, but looks is somewhat important at least at first. I guess I am a bit shallow in that way and I really wish I wasn't. I do know though that looks isn't the final word to me and that other qualities means more to me.

I don't know why this came up, but I was looking at my hands the other day. I looked at them and decided, "These can't be my hands! There so ugly!" My hands now have age spots on the backs. I am told that this is from years of sun. Also, there are wrinkles on the backs of my hands. These wrinkles look like the wrinkles of an old person, again from the sun, I am told. Where did these hands come from? Who do they belong to? Certainly they aren't mine!

It's really strange what a person will think about, isn't it?

Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. Thus spake Qoheleth.

Love,
Shel