What You Look For When You Look Within

I gaze at a mirror. It’s not the first time I have done so.

A thousand reflections, a thousand different faces.

Always the same question: Who am I?

My body seems to change with less turbulence than what is within me. Inner transformation has required that seatbelts remain fastened. Physically, I would need to be absent from a mirror for years before wondering, when I looked again, who was staring back at me. Inwardly, that seems to happen daily. Do you ever look in the mirror and think, “Who are you?” Then you understand. Mirrors rarely settle on one answer.

The first manufactured mirrors were discovered in graves, which I find quite strange.

In later societies, people believed mirrors provided a way to look back in time. Some people can only see the person that they were. What is within is imprisoned in what once was.

 Author Lewis Carroll has his character, Alice, step through a large mirror. She does so “because there’ll be no one here to scold me away from the fire. Oh, what fun it’ll be, when they see me through the glass in here, and can’t get at me!”

Sometimes, I delight in an image of myself no one can control.

Alice returns to her home, wondering if Looking-Glass World was her own dream or the dream of someone else. Have you known people for whom your worth is only as rich as the part they have you play? Is that who you are?

In Snow White, the wicked one asks, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is fairest of us all?” The moral of the story is either that mirrors don’t lie, or that a mirror is only as valuable as the validation we find in it.

Perhaps that is why we discover mirrors shattered in pieces, its broken glass still a reflection of the one who last peered into it. Or, why, when I walk into abandoned rooms, entering through a door that creaks, stepping into slits of sunlight that invade the room rather than illuminate it, I find standing-mirrors hidden by tarps. It’s not enough that the room was vacated and closed up. The mirror must still be covered, never to reflect the stories it holds.

Michael Jackson sang, “I’m starting with the man in the mirror, I’m asking that he change his ways.” Have you ever given your reflection a pep talk?

Each glance in a mirror leaves me with a choice and a belief:

I can appear as I want others to see me.

I can gaze upon my former self.

I can check in with myself and promise to do better.

Or I can listen.

There is always a voice to hear when you look at the mirror. It is not a voice of judgment, but of invitation. It whispers of more. It promises clarity of who you are. 

You are not who others want you to be or who you think you should be or who you make yourself to be in certain situations. You are not locked in your past nor are you trapped in a viewpoint.

What does the voice say?

I hear the echoes of what they speak to you: Gifted. Opportune. Future- oriented. Strong. Learner. Curious. Creative. Worthy of attention. Unfinished. Clean start. Imperfect, like everyone else. Determined, like few others.

How often when you look into a mirror do you look to see what is wrong?

Before you leave today, look to see what is right.

What did you see? Let's have fun in the comments and do something different: Tell another person what you have seen in them that they appreciate. Have them check out what you wrote.