What is it with mirrors? When you pass one, do you catch yourself stopping to take a peek – make sure you look okay?
The mirror in my bedroom makes me look like a house (naturally, since that’s the one that’s handy when I’m dressing), but the one in the hall makes me look not-too-bad. Slenderer being the key word. Of course, you know I’m going to recheck that image when I walk past the friendlier mirror just to make sure I don’t look like a house, and I might actually look much better than I thought. Reflections. We can catch them with light or on a calm lake or in a mirror. But what’s really real? Especially since everything in front of a mirror is reflected backward.
Disregarding the backward issue, if you’ve ever been in a mirrored exhibit at an amusement park, or you have an app on your phone that warps your face into comical versions, or if you’ve looked into an old, flawed mirror, you know that some mirrors don’t necessarily tell the truth. Kind of makes you wonder what you really look like. Even cameras don’t always tell the truth. Especially if you are not photogenic. Some people are and some are not. Does this really matter? Do we need to know every flaw, every pound gained or lost, every messy hair day? (Mine is always a messy hair day, lol – it’s the two crowns, or swirls in the back of my head.) What if we look horrendous in the new outfit we bought? We love that suit, so why not wear it no matter what we look like, right? Why do we care so much about what we look like? We’re all just human; all flawed in one way or another. Even though we try very hard to hide our flaws and sometimes succeed…for a bit.
I’m not saying it’s all bad. Keeping well-groomed isn’t all about vanity; it’s also a health issue, and there’s a certain quality of politeness in going out in public being at least fairly clean and looking decent. On the hand, I get a kick out of people who shop in their pj’s. To be that free of fashion or caring what other’s think must be a blessing.
I remember a commercial that came out when my girls were preteens. A famous model came on the screen talking to their age group. She had absolutely NO makeup on. None. She was still relatively lovely and of course slender, but the message was perfect. This is who I am. I’m not the Barbie doll, perfect model of myself when I’m all made up and walking the runway. This is me. I don’t remember if there was more to the commercial, but the main point was that none of us are gorgeously flawless without our aids to create the illusion of perfection. Perhaps we are fooling ourselves by not realizing that all that illusion of perfection is in truth the inferior us. The inferior reflection of who we really are.
And that gets us to the other meat of this one-sided conversation (that’s a blog, you know; one-sided conversation – until you folks make comments, which is fun – and this is starting to turn in to a TANGEANT). Let’s delve a little deeper. By deeper I mean inner. This was bound to come out, you know. What’s inside is what counts, right? Right. It’s easy enough to hide our inner negative qualities behind a smart outfit and a false smile, but have you ever thought about how we’d all look if we could see both the ugly and the beautiful of the inside of us on our outer person? A bit like in the movie, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” – I don't want to give anything away, so you'll just have to watch it.
As we age, we see more flaws coming out, and we have to adjust to new infirmities or limitations, new spots or weight issues; we have to let go of our physical approach to life. What’s left? What was always there: us. Me. You. The real you, the real me. Not a reflection in a mirror or a darkened windowpane. Not a made up, primped up, concealed and blushed version. You. Me. Nothing can change who we really are. Except ourselves, if we really want to put in the work, and even then, we have certain qualities, talents, and such that we were born with. The core of us is always us. From day one to last breath, we are the creature we were born as. And that’s as it should be. It’s the ugliness in the world that scars us or makes us want to be different than we are or that turns us ugly on the inside (bitter, angry, prideful, jealous, scared…).
One of my sisters, when she was still fairly young, once asked an elderly lady how it felt to be old. The elderly gal laughed and said (the best I can remember), “I have no idea. I walked past the mirror in the hall the other day and had no idea who the heck that old woman was looking out at me.” That was the “me” moment inside her. She was too busy enjoying life to bother to look at what she looked like on the surface or what the world saw of her. She knew who she was.
I don’t believe we get lost along the path of life. I think we find ourselves. Not our reflection or how we look on the outside, but who we are on the inside: who we are. When you look in a mirror, don’t see the figure before you, but the soul beneath and know you are a diamond shining out into the darkness.
Mirror Lake at Yosemite, California
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