Dismorphing

AS EVERYONE KNOWS, everyone is working from home during our self manufactured made in America never ending national epidemic. Offices are empty. Most folks seem to prefer the homebound arrangement; working in pajamas with cat on lap and snack in hand is somehow more cozier than suit and tie, and anal courtesy. However, those who spend their long days at home video conferencing have a different take. Although the precise extent and degree of the mental illness epidemic hasn't yet been determined, there is among the zoom and skype crowd an emotional illness in which the "victim" sees herself on camera hour after hour, day after day, month after month, and slowly but steadily becomes thououghly disgusted with and depressed about the way her face looks. The medical term for this peculiar malady is "dismorphia". It could eventually be commonly called "reverse narcissim", but isn't yet. One might wonder if we all would be a lot better off if in fact the reverse were happening; if mmillions of latently vain Americans, beholding their strinkingly lovely visage constantly daily, were falling all over themselves falling in love with themselves and, sitting tansfixed and motionlessly frozen in front of their monitors, getting nothing done. It seems there is something very disconcerting about looking at the self all day every day, becoming intimately familair with every nook, cranny, blemish and sag in high def, and then trying to emotionaly come to terms with the reality that no, I am not, after all, a beauty queen. The thus engraved image, burning into the cerebrum, making us crazier than hell. What, exactly, is the solution, or is there one? To simply stop the self absored staring, and, as the old song goes, "Look Away, Dixieland"? That would seem to defy the laws of physics, if not human nature. To vaccinate, and get back into the office? Or should extreme measures be attempted? Should we immediately begin inculcating into American children the decidedly un-American sentiment that true beauty is not of the flesh, that skin deep personal appearances are not paramount, that all these pretty blonde people with straight white teeth and nary a blemish on television and in adverstising everywhere are not real, but only CGIs? But then, what to do with the adult population, for whom, as we say, the cat is already out of the bag, deeply conditioned as we are to regard sexual appeal as the pinnacle of attainment? Beyond any hope of reform, we adults are doomed to endure the self imposed fruits of our own vanity, until age or premature death intervenes inevitably. Upon reflection, I begin to see both why I look at myself in the mirror so often, and why I dislike doing so. I am impelled to judge what I see. If I like what I see, which is about half the time, I only want more adrenalin of vanity. If I don't, it becomes like gambling; addiction to the urgent necessity of playing the game until we get even, or, further and further ahead. In gambling and narcissism, there is no true victory, but only endless striving. I should have smashed every mirror in the house years ago, or asked my parensts to do so. I'm lucky though. I have never zoomed, and now that I know what I know, never will.