I had a strange pea-sized reddish-looking spot on my face that appeared over night a bunch of weeks ago. And no, it wasn’t a pimple. But man you would have thought the world was ending by the way I acted about it the entire time it was there. When it finally disappeared a few weeks later, whatever it was, I realized I still had some serious vanity issues I needed to deal with.
My vanity definitely began growing up in a family where how we looked and how we presented ourselves was far more important than working on our spiritual conditions within. Each of us in our own way spent more time in front of a mirror, with maybe the exception of my father, than we did looking at the things inside of ourselves that truly needed to be worked on.
As I grew older and left home, this only became exacerbated once I came out of the closet because for some reason how one looked seemed to be the most important thing with the majority of the gay culture. So as all my character defects began to glare more and more with each passing year, the only thing that really remained important to me was how I looked, especially my face.
Yes, I know that’s pretty vain. But for the longest time, it’s all I knew. I thought that as long as I looked attractive, people would want to be around me, date me, and be a part of my life. I never actually put much thought to the idea that maybe if I worked on my spiritual condition, it too might attract people to me, but ones that were far healthier for my life.
Over the past three years this is precisely what I’ve done, work on my spiritual condition. And while that has vastly improved along with my character defects greatly being reduced in the process, there obviously remains one unhealthy trait I haven’t been able to fully remove yet. That of course is my vanity and it’s something that became extremely clear to me for the several weeks I had that large red spot on my face.
In all honesty, I must have looked at it in the mirror dozens of times every day, placing tea tree oil and various other concoctions on it all with the hope it would disappear as quick as possible. The only thing all of that did though was make it look even worse, to the point where I had a mini meltdown when a friend at a meeting looked at me and said “What happened to your face?” It was then I ultimately started to accept the fact I had a problem with this unwanted trait.
Yes I realize I’m not getting any younger and as the years go on, I know more things are going to appear on my face and body, such as liver spots, moles, and various other signs of aging. This is specifically why I decided to write about this, because for me, the first step is admitting I’m powerless over something as silly as a red spot on my face and vanity itself.
I think the key for me on where to go from here with this character defect is to continue improving my spiritual condition. Because ultimately I fully believe that the closer I grow to my Higher Power, the less I’m going to ever become concerned with how I look on the outside. After all, I’m finding that as I continue to walk further and further along a spiritual path, what’s on the inside is really all that matters…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
I would like to tell you that I don’t identify – because (outside of my partner and my mother) I’d never found anyone who found me particularly attractive, either from the neck up or down. But I know that when rosacea hit me in my 40’s, I felt like I was 14 all over again. In fact, I told people (and still do, when it gets bad enough) that if I’d known at age 14 that I’d still be dealing with acne at just shy of 60, I would have offed myself. Today, I know that hardly anyone notices my rosacea – except me, of course. (And some really rude, self-centered guys with no buffer between thought and mouth…) The book “The Little Prince” taught me this: “What is essential is invisible to the eye – it is only with the heart that one sees rightly.”
Great quote Steve and great comments! Thanks for sharing my friend!
Oh the personal and soul torturing price we pay for being bombarded since childhood by Corporate messages being pressed on us in order to convince ourselves that we NEED their products in order to be presentable and accepted to and by the public at large. Couple that with the 50’s-70’s mentality that it is indeed better to look good than to feel good. No wonder so many suffer the defeating results of this mentality. I will tell you without doubt, that when you are able to really grasp the truth that what others think of you is none of your business, you will be set free from yourself.
Great comments Bob! I agree. 🙂