No one every says what they really think.
Its a relentless dance around people’s feelings and social expectations.
Maybe thats what J.D. Salinger got right when he wrote catcher in the Rye. Maybe what we all relate to in that book is the fact that we all sense the”phony-ness” of everyone around us, and even more discustingly the phony-ness in ourselves.
Maybe thats what Sylvia Plath got right in The Bell Jar. She sensed it too. No amount of glam fills the emptyness. No amount of dresses and sex will ever make it go away.
Even Solomon, before society as we know it even existed, when he wrote Ecclesiastes, knew this:
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! all is vanity
what does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?
A generation goes, a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises, and the sun goes down
and hastens to the place where it rises.
The wind blows to the south
and goes around to the north
around and around goes the wind
and on its circuits the wind returns
All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where streams flow
there they will flow again
All things are full of wearyness
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing
nor the ear filled with hearing
what has will be,
and what has been done is what will be done
and there is nothing new under the sun
Is there a thing of which it is said
“see, this is new!”?
It has been already
in ages before us
There is no remembrance of former things
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be
among those who come after.
Nothing seems real. Its all fake, is all a web of ulterior motives and unspoken thoughts and feelings.
Lord, save us from ourselves and our vanity.
Only out of true depravity comes true faith
