Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

I was recently asked a couple of provocative questions. Are you absolutely sure when others look at you that they see the same thing that you see in the mirror? One may never know. And do you think its worth continuing to create yourself the way others think they see you, or the way you think you see yourself in the mirror?

So I took a mirror and looked at my reflection for a long gaze, and I thought about what I thought I knew about myself. Was I being realistic? Do I really love myself? And what do I think about my identity? Am I making all of this up? After all, it is only a reflection that I see.

Have I ever really looked myself in the eye to objectively measure my character? No, not really. Perhaps I have based all of my beliefs about myself on something I have actually never seen. I've seen my hands and most of the rest of me, but I have never looked directly at my face. Interesting! Not one of us have. What I think I know about myself comes entirely from a reflection. All I have ever seen is the inverse of what everyone else sees when they look at me.

I drew a conclusion that most of what I believe about myself was ultimately the result of what other people have said about me or how they reacted to me. I have mostly trusted whatever their reaction was. Strange, especially when they probably don't even know themselves - since they experience the very same dilemma. In fact, most people are probably afraid to completely know themselves, fearing that they might see something they are not ready or willing to accept. So this is the reality of me – nothing more than a perception of an inverse reflection.