Vanity is the huge, un-proclaimed fault of our generation.

We are spiraling out of control by creating unmanageable self-images. We are spending excessive amounts of money on makeup and clothing we don’t need, we are spending hours watching DIY hair tutorials and reading skin blogs, we are spending, and spending. Spending our lives away, spending our youth.

Our lives, each second, moment and year, are spent in the search for something as non-existent as the fountain of youth- perfection.

We want to be the main character in a movie. The girl or guy that everybody wants. The one with honor, intelligence, wit, and rarity. Yet the only thing we can take with us from impressions like this is their looks. The association that beauty makes the hero like-able. Not his honor, not his intelligence, not his wit. As far as rarity, it’s the name of some Cover-girl lip-stain.

The search for un-flawed beauty is as condemning as Greed.

Never is it in our grasp, never can we be it. No matter how much we buy to become it,  no matter how much we change. If we were the image of perfection, there would be a flaw. The lust for beauty is raging in today’s teens. The avarice of those seeking un-flawed aesthetics is insatiable.

But it’s there.

It’s raining in the desert today. The sky is gray, and the earth feels green, the air smells sweet and damp. This is what beauty is. The shards of gravel beneath my feet are not symmetrical, and the plants are scaly with age. But that air, and the rain, and the earth- it’s beautiful.

Yet stepping into the bathroom I can hear murmurs of disgust; humidity has taken it’s toll on people’s hair-dos, rain has bled black tear stains of makeup onto girl’s cheeks.

Pitter Patter.

The beauty is unheard under the voices of the self-conscious.

Our ears are shut, so let’s open our eyes to this fault. I am not saying I have fully myself, I am not saying it’s easy, but I’m saying it’s worth it.

I’m saying it’s okay to like the mole on your face, the kinks in your hair, the asymmetrical gravel and the scales on cacti.

I’m saying it’s beautiful.

I’m saying that the image you make is more than these details, than the pimple on your chin or the quirks in your nose shape. The details are not the image. The details are not important.

There is much more to the rain than the mud it makes.

Vanity is the huge, un-proclaimed fault of our generation, because it seeks an end to the faults that make us the thing we desire most- perfection.

It is raining in the desert today, lets take a moment to listen.