Vanity

I was watching a few movies this weekend while my parents were out of town [it was actually quite a lot] and I realized something. If we look back at my previous post, I talked about finding the person who is right for you forever and not settling for the moment. I forgot to mention that keeping that love, that marriage working takes more than being perfect for each other and being together for the right reasons. It takes selflessness and the desire to work every day, among other things. Just getting the people and the place right does not mean happily ever after.
The first movie I'll mention was Vanity Fair. Becky Sharp was born poor, the daughter of an artist and a French opera singer. Hardly proper birth for the time. But she was determined to move up in the world. She became a governess to a moderately wealthy family and fell in love with the second son, who nearly worshipped her. They married and were disinherited by the family for her background. But they had love and each other, and Becky's determination to rise up from their surroundings. Unfortunately, that determination was not as much for her family as for herself. Through her near-desperation, she ruins her marriage and her life, losing her husband because he can't stand to live with her further for the pain and losing her son because she is deemed not fit to raise him. Ultimately, she does become famous...but not in the way that she had desired. Her vanity and pride ruined what could have been a wonderful marriage and life as a family, and she ended up alone.
The second movie was Gone With The Wind. Scarlett O'Hara is desperately in love with Ashley Wilkes, and it does not matter to her that he is engaged, for she knows that she is the woman he truly loves. She hates his fiance, though she is a wonderful, kind woman. As the Civil War approaches, Ashley is going to leave to fight, and in a desperate attempt to make him jealous, she marries his new brother-in-law. Charles dies quickly in the war, and Scarlett is forced to mourn him. She resents the restrictions placed on her, and thrives on attention. As the war ends, her family home and fortune are in ruins and her family nearly starves. In order to save her home, she marries her sister's intended, takes over his business and becomes even more hardened and embittered against ever being poor and hungry again. Her second husband dies as he defends her honor, and she quickly remarries the man who has loved her the whole time, the dashing Rhett Butler. But Scarlett still is selfish and spoiled and cannot see the love from her husband or the love she has for him because of her blindness until it is too late. He leaves her at the end, and when she asks him what she is to do, what is to become of her, he gives her the immortal words, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."
Vanity was the downfall of what could have been. The inability to think of others or to see beyond their own nose destroyed lives and loves and marriages. How many stories in reality are like this? How many lives and loves and marriages have been ruined because someone lost sight of what mattered, because they forgot about the whole picture and only saw the part?
This life is a journey and yes, it is our own, but that does not mean we must do it alone. We should not do it alone. We cannot. And the more we try, the further behind we will fall.