I don’t believe in hell and, if I did, I wouldn’t believe vanity would send you there. Murder, yes. Theft, possibly. But vanity? Who’s it hurting?
It’s a good thing I don’t believe in such things because, if I did, I’d be worried about spending eternity as a marshmallow at God’s campfire.Vanity, you see, is one of my weaknesses.I don’t mean I spend hours in front of the mirror or buy hundred-dollar mascara or waste my time envying supermodels. What I do mean is that I’m too sensitive to how people see me, looks-wise. When, for example, my nine-year-old Italian niece referred to me as “bella,” I felt like I’d just been crowned Queen of All that is Glorious. And when someone told me I looked older than a friend of mine who is the same age, I nearly hyperventilated myself into a coma.
When I see spiritual women who are released from the yoke of caring about beauty—such as Catholic and Buddhist nuns—my spiritual side is always awash in admiration for their maturity and wisdom. But a tiny voice inside often murmurs, “a little foundation would even out the skin tone there.”
The thing about looks, of course, is that they’re one of the things you can be sure of having less of when you get old, at least if you’re going by society’s standards. You might stay rich, powerful, smart, talented, and famous your whole life, and you might even stay beautiful, but you’re not going to be considered as beautiful as you were in your youth. If you’re a woman, you discover at some point that people start using the term “vibrant.” “Women your age can remain vibrant for years,” a hairdresser told me once, and I thought, “Vibrant? Whatever happened to hot?”
So with all this angst about appearance, you can imagine my reaction when I boarded a Royal Moroccan Airlines flight headed to Casablanca and the smiling flight attendant welcomed me on board with the astonishing greeting, “Hello! Are you pregnant?” Her eyes flickered to my tummy. I was barely able to stammer a “no” before I stumbled to my seat in a state of confused and humiliated shock.
I was instantly split into two opposing selves, like the regular Mr. Spock and the mean, goateed Mr. Spock in the Star Trek episode about parallel universes. In one universe, a horrified me was saying, “I weigh 130 pounds. Sure, I’d like it to be 125, but pregnant? Really?” At the exact same moment, in another dimension, I was beaming. “That woman thinks I’m young enough to be pregnant!” Because, honestly, that ship sailed years ago.Several hours later, John and I arrived in Casablanca, a city that sounds romantic but turned out to be boring and gray. It rained through our entire two-day stay, and our hotel was weird. Add that to the fact that I had just been told I looked like a pregnant lady, and you do not have a pleasant scene.
I couldn’t get that flight attendant’s comment out of my head. Every time I looked in the mirror, my eyes involuntarily went to my midsection and my mind to the question of whether I might be overweight and just not realize it. To put this in a Buddhist perspective, you could say I was experiencing attachment. And, as all students of Buddhism know, attachment leads to one thing: suffering.
At last, our stay in the city I will forever think of as Casa Bleaka came to an end, and we took a cab to the grungy train station. We were on the platform waiting for the (dare I say it?) Marrakech Express, when I spotted a wall with large, colorful ads posted on it. Among them was one for maternity wear. And the models—bone thin and clearly unpregnant—were all sporting tunics virtually identical to the Indian kurta I’d been wearing when I boarded that flight: Same design, same loose-fitting cut, even the same type of embroidery. And the whole conundrum fell into place. The flight attendant didn’t think I looked fat or young. She was just responding to what she assumed was maternity clothing.
This, my dear friends, is where attachment will get you: Two days of annoyance for nothing. Lesson learned. Well, not really. It will take a lot more than that to unlearn a lifelong habit. But at least it shined a little light on the pitfalls of attachment. A baby step toward enlightenment.
Great post. A courage and honest confession of what plagues many of us. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you.