Vanity is everywhere. Men and women are vain. Not just about their looks or intelligence or the children they have, but about their competence and self-assumed power.
Doctors are especially vain. If there is something that they cannot do or cannot understand, then it must be fiction, fraud or misunderstanding. Doctors do not appreciate being told that acupuncture or chiropractic or any one of the many complementary forms of healing and medicine work. Cardiologists and surgeons are the worst.
Vanity is such an obvious aberration or emotional reaction; you would think that most people would see it arise and manifest. When it is a powerful motivating factor, it gives birth to prejudice, stubborn denial and narrow materialistic views of things.
I remember a doctor looking at me as if I had come from another planet when I quoted to him the philosophical notion that there are material things, less material things, immaterial things and spiritual things.
Vanity with respect to power, position, proficiency and pulchritude is the most common and intense form that we encounter in our daily routines. More sly, terrible and extensive is the vanity of the pulpit, but life is too short to cover such a wide-ranging field.
Raphael O'Suna
Haiku
