So, there are always a couple ways to read any article, and far be it for me to simplify that challenge for any readers who may choose to grace my site with a visit tonight or tomorrow.
Maybe this is about aging. Or maybe about our views of ourselves as compared what others see in us (or don't). Or maybe it is about our emotional age, quite a different number than our biological age, IMHO.
Anyway, I notice every morning when I look in my bathroom mirror that, perhaps due to the lighting or the angle or the color scheme in that small room or some other factor that I seem to look pretty good. It's like, "Dude, you're okay, no wonder some women still find you attractive."
That's nice enough, but later when I return to my bedroom, a much larger room with different lighting, a different mirror and a different color scheme, I seem suddenly to look perfectly awful!
Who is that man and how did he age so rapidly walking from one end of his flat to the other?
Something similar happens at work between the elevator mirror and the one in the men's room. I'm not sure what I am looking for when I look in mirrors, but is most definitively is not to find out I have aged myself out of any definition of beauty altogether, because I still have my ego, you know?
Does this happen to everyone as we grow older? America is so much the land that celebrates youth, but demographically we are graying rapidly.
Then there is the matter of the human mirrors we provide for each other. You don't have to have studied Jung to be aware that our Western concept of romantic love includes a strong element of falling in love with how another special person sees us. What (s)he reflects back to you is intoxicating in a way no drug could ever be. Once somebody sees your inner beauty in a new way, that helps you feel valued and loved, it is like no other experience, and you are going to be hooked to his/her attention.
Mirror, mirror on the wall. Who is the most beautiful of all? The one who thinks you are. That is the essence of love. Turn away from him or her at your own peril. You may well find lust or some other value elsewhere, but the way our world works, you won't easily find that kind of love again.
Or, maybe that is my mirror image talking. Nothing is simple, let alone the image that surprises us in the mirrors surrounding us. Especially the human mirrors. Each new one sees a new you.
2 comments:
I don't like mirrors anymore. It only gets worse as we have more years under our belts. Best not to look at times and just go with how you feel.
Nance
Yeah, you're probably right with the glass variety. The human mirrors are a little harder to resist.
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