What do you see when you look in the mirror? Since we’re friends, I’ll be honest and tell you what goes through my head every morning. There’s this guy standing there… and he looks older than I think he should. He’s tired and the wrinkles and gray hairs are starting to show. He’s heavier than he has been, but still a lot lighter than he once was.
And yet I really don’t know if he’s who I thought I would be.
But that’s just the surface… and you know me well enough to know that I’m never going to stop there. So inside those eyes, deep back where the light barely reaches, there’s a reflection that reveals so many things. Fear and ambition, kindness and frustration. A touch (or more) of madness, and the beginnings of something that could possibly be wisdom.
But that’s just in the moment… while time within our minds can go forward, and go back.
So when the light bounces off the silver that’s just behind the glass, I can see so many things from the past. Successes and failures, lost loves and moments that passed into eternity. Memories of things as they were, and desires of how I wish they could have been. When I see that man, I see all that he wishes he could have done, and I see the alchemical fluid of regret run through his veins.
Altering the way he feels about himself in the now.
Yet I also see futures in that moment of reflection, and the inimitable realms of possibility and potential. Sometimes I wonder if all that I see there is just a reflection of my ego, and the desperate desires of a soul that sometimes feels as though he has seen too much, and that the only way any of this can make any sense is if he becomes the person he is trying to find in the mirror.
For he feels like a better ending is the only outcome that will make the story of his life make sense.
But most of all when I look into the mirror, I see a thousand beliefs of self, and how the story of my life should be. I see and feel the desire for certainty and kindness in a universe that deals in neither, and I sometime fear the touch of madness that seems to be the reflection of the possible genius lurking somewhere deep within.
Always there is judgment, and none of that is certain.
For as long as I seek to quantify what I see, and try to make sense of the experiences that I remember, I am stuck in a paradigm of judgment rather than gratitude. Instead of being grateful to the man of the past for all that he has done to make my life of this moment possible, I seek to quantify his passage behind the concepts of right and wrong, good and evil.
Judgment involves time, while gratitude is rooted firmly in the now.
I try to focus on the feelings I have for that man, and seek to question the motivations and meanings inherent in the emotions that my mirror self raises. For every belief about him, there is a story that requires interpretation, and I have long since learned that the statements I hold true about him should always be open to question, especially the ones I have held onto the longest.
For what we believe and feel about ourselves is more often than not a response to the traumas of life, rather than an understanding of who we really are.
But most of all, as I stand there looking at him, I try to find a space in my soul for him to exist without my judgment and my expectations. I have came to realize that the greater space I can hold for me to be myself, the greater the space I can hold for you to be yourself, and the better I can help you find a way to your own truth.
Because you have a self in the mirror, and I’m guessing you think about them too.
If I were to sum up the point of this work, and try to distill all of these writings into one statement, it would probably be this… That I seek to help those with whom I connect to find a pathway to their own selves, so that they may accept themselves, and reduce both the suffering they experience, and the suffering that they may cause.
The universe seems to have enough suffering built in for a lifetime.
And my mission is to decrease it in any way I can.
Who do you see when you take a good long look in the mirror?
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings