How Can One Word Mean Both "Pride" and "Emptiness"?!

All is vanity. Ecclesiastes 1:2b

I’ve misplaced my hairbrush. (I believe it’s in the book bag I carry between home and the church, but I’m not seeing that either.) I don't think I own a comb. So I’ve been finger-combing my hair this week. With my current hairstyle, it works but I don't want to keep it up.

Last month, I started thinking vanity might be a good topic – mostly because of wondering before getting this haircut if it was too young for me. I'm going to take this lost hairbrush as a cue.

Merriam-Webster online dictionary has six definitions for vanity. (I've left off three that concern furnishings.)

• inflated pride in oneself or one's appearance :  conceit
• something that is vain, empty, or valueless
• the quality or fact of being vain

Most of us think of pride and conceit when we think of vanity – like when we say someone spends too much effort on their appearance. But...

I'm clergy and I often write intentionally from a faith perspective. My resources include the Bible as well as dictionaries. And what I find there is that most of the biblical references to vanity are of the second variety (per the points above.) Decades ago, when I first read Ecclesiastes, I was so confused. What was the writer saying? How did all these things connect to pride? I knew that vanity and vain share the same root, but ... ? It was only years later that it clicked: Vain as in "In vain" rather than vain as in "Being vain." Ah, I get it! (Language can be confusing sometimes.) 

They're saying: "So much of life is empty. So much of what we do or fuss over just doesn't matter." I'm not necessarily vain, but I'll be disappointed if I expect something to last forever. (Still not very happy or hopeful, but maybe true more often than we care to believe.)

Even in Proverbs 31:30 – the chapter about the "perfect" woman – can be understood this way. Instead of 

Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,
    but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. (NRSV)

(Bad me, bad me!) it can be interpreted as:

Charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting,
    but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. (CEB)

Yes, today's culture has gone off the deep end and vanity is probably of the "Being vain" sort in most instances. As described in the documentary Culture in Decline: Consumption-Vanity Disorder: "Today we live in an ocean with enormous waves of status obsession, materialism, vanity, ego and consumerism." 

And, yes, it's probably a good idea for us to check in with ourselves now and then to assess our vanity quotient. But for some of us, vanity isn't as much of a problem as we (women, mostly) have been led to believe. I'm comfortable with my haircut. Kay assures me it's fine. No one's laughed at me. And anyway, I'm doing better with that.

I always thought that's what Carly Simon meant when she sang, "You probably think this song is about you." But now I wonder if it was a double entendre, though not an indecent one.

So it really doesn't matter, matter, matter, matter, matter!

Ruddigore by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

Picture found at Steal Her Style