There is an Episode of 30 Rock, called “The Bubble”[1] in which Liz (Tina Fey) begins to date a character played by John Ham, whose good looks have allowed him to skate through life with nary a care. Doors open for him. Girls swoon over him. Bad things only happen to other people. No one asks him to clean up his own messes. Cops won’t ticket him. People throw modeling contracts at him with outrageous figures attached. But this easy attainment has left him wanting in the basic skills of life and problem solving. He’s a doctor but can’t do the Heimlich, and a tennis coach who can’t play a lick of tennis. Nobody holds him accountable for being terrible at everything he does. Liz enjoys the benefits of his bubble life for a while, but ultimately decides that being a fully functional, socially decent, and emotionally resilient person is more important.
At a friends tame bachelor party, out and about on the pier’s nightlife in Virginia Beach, the groom’s early 20s cousin was tagging along. Long flowing blonde hair, pretty boy face, trim but someone taut frame. I believe your response to seeing him was “WOW!!!” I hope he’s at our table.” Rough paraphrase. While out, we were hunting for a rest room but the only place we found with one had a big aggressive sign “Restrooms are for Customers Only.” It was a fancy place and it looked like they meant business. But the cousin couldn’t understand our reluctance to just walk in. So, laughing at us a little, he waltzes up to the restaurant and goes in. We see the young hostess peel into an ear to ear smile. She is dazzled and flustered and flirting and bashful all at once. She escorted him to the bathroom herself so he won’t get lost. When he returns he says, “See, their cool about it; just go in.” I said, “Well, Bubble Boy, she was cool with you going in; I doubt we’d get the same reaction.” He had no idea what we were talking about and couldn’t get his head around being called Bubble Boy even when I explained it. He didn’t live in any bubble of grace for the stunning… no sireee. So I set a challenge, because his protestations to special favor was just too much to ignore. I was determined to send him home just a little bit wiser about life. So, we sent another one of us in who would repeat the exact words he said to her. Only he looked like a radically shorter, nerdier, balder Dwight from The Office. Bubble Boy watched as our other companion repeated his journey to Restroom Land. The same girl, only this time she scowled. She shook her head. She pointed at the sign, “Restrooms are for Customers Only.” They had one outside and inside in the hostess’ lobby. He pleaded. She was stalwart. It was not happening. The cousin was aghast. He exclaimed as our associate returned forlorn, “I do live in a bubble!”
Even at my peak, I was never regarded as being particularly handsome. Your grandfather was considered quite good looking in his day, and even though I look and sound much like him, everything came out just a little bit hinky… just enough to throw off the effect… like those imitation B grade paintings they used to sell in malls.
Now I can’t say that this has never bothered me; who, after all, wouldn’t love to be stunningly good looking. How much easier life could be. So, while I say that I pity stunningly beautiful people, I also envy them a little. Much like I envy the complacency of the borderline simpleton.
Can you guess what I’m going to say next? I’ve used the words “easier life.”
As annoying and tiresome as it can be, easy attainment is not good for people, and free is a soul disaster waiting to happen. It is always bad when one is handed without effort what is needed to survive and thrive, when one is given without accountability that which we were meant to earn through labor, self-sacrifice, or committed relationship. We were made to work at things. This is worldview in play. God made Adam to take dominion, to subdue the world around him, to work in the garden. Even in the fall of Man, work was in play. Work would be harder yet, and it was man’s commission to prosper by the sweat of his nose. (An image of sweaty labor where it runs down his face and drips off his nose.)
The comic strip character, Calvin complains a good deal about his father’s perception of how hardships in life build character. It is the theme of more than a few frames. Lamentations 3:27 declares, “It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.” We were made for work and effort builds character that keeps us in good times and bad. Those who receive without effort become weak and inflexible, entitled and unappreciative. It is impossible to be happy without gratitude and those who have everything handed to them, who are surrounded by fawning tend not to cultivate the richer graces like gratitude and service.
Indeed, one of the great surprises I get in life is to encounter extremely good looking people or extremely talented people who have great character, emotional resilience, and a sensitive social engagement of others. When I plunge beneath the waves of this anomaly, I almost always find hard labor, personal pain, family tragedy, and/or a no-nonsense upbringing by parents who delivered structured consequences and could not be bought off with a smile or ready tears.
So what am I really writing about? Beautiful people? Talented people? Yes, and no.
Super beautiful and naturally talented people are our canaries in the coal mine. They manifest the danger of easy attainment in a ready fashion. Proverbs 11:22 said it well, “Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman who lacks discretion.” So too Proverbs 31:30, “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a women who fears Yahweh is to be praised.”
But, from a worldview perspective, I’m really writing about the value of suffering and labor for developing elements of our humanity that cannot be developed in other ways. I’m writing about the damage of easy attainment for anyone. The villainy of nanny-state programs. The toxicity of poorly conceived charity.
It doesn’t really matter what a person looks like; if things come easy and life is filled with consequence-free upbringing and responsibility-free sustenance then those piteous souls will have weak character, poor resilience, and a debilitating sense of entitlement… even if they are homely like me.
[1] 30 Rock, Season 3, Episode 15, March 19, 2009.
