Before I go any further, you should probably get in on this little secret (if you aren't already):
I'm as vain as they come.
And while we're at it, I might as well tell you I'm also as insecure as they come, because as some of us know all too well, the two are one and the same.
The vain man on a bad day is insecure. The insecure man on a good day is vain. The torture in being either comes from all the switching back and forth, and mostly, the switching never stops.
Right about now, I could pose seemingly enlightened questions like, "Who isn't vain, really? Who isn't full of her/himself? Who isn't insecure?"
I could tell you that there are two different kinds of self-obsessed people - the kind who actually crave attention and the kind who couldn't care less what you think.
I could, but it would only be conjecture, because at the end of the day, the only thing I have any authority to talk about (and even that, only sometimes) is myself. As far as I know, confident and humble people truly exist. As far as I know, there is only one strain of self-obsession. (But if there are two kinds, I have the first.)
What I can provide with some integrity is a little insight into any vain, insecure, self-obsessed person who's exactly like myself.
I'm sure that our current "I share, therefore I am" way of existence is at least in part responsible for this, but one of my greatest fears is dying without being understood. Like, really, really understood. To die and see people have the wrong idea of who I was, what I was, how I was and why I was, without anything or anyone to tell them otherwise, is one of my scariest nightmares. If I were to die right now in some freak accident, I don't think I'd be portrayed as some kind of living saint (because that's so, so laughably far from the truth), but who knows? A lot of regular, troubled humans have died and enjoyed an awkward sainthood on earth because people were scared of honest memories. You understand why this is a terrifying fate, right? It would be like lying to everyone you love for as long as you're remembered, and being completely unable to tell the truth.
I mean yes, I might want people to know my greatest potential for good, any time I've ever been funny to anyone, all secret acts of kindness and what I could look like on a really great hair day when my eyelids aren't uneven. But I would also want them to know my greatest sins, my deepest darknesses, all the things that make me bone-chillingly human. Even if I don't want anyone to know right this second, I want it out there before I die, somehow.
Maybe that's impossible - for someone to die only after leaving behind an all-encompassing, accurate record of who he/she was. More importantly, it's probably a waste of time to worry about what people will think of you after you die. You'll be dead, for one! And after hardly any time, no one will think of you at all. But it concerns me all the same. And I think in some indirect but very important ways, that concern informs a lot of what I do. Maybe I want to build up all the good things I could possibly be, do my best to delude people with illusions of goodness so that when the time comes for them to be hit with the truth, they'll have a buffer, and I can scrape by as nothing more or less than "a person who was alive."
Maybe, (probably,) I'm vain because I'm scared.
Scared of what? That's for next time.
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