By Lara AlHassanieh | Staff Writer
In life, it’s easy to play the blame game when things go wrong, with he-said-she-said stories all over the news and hearing elders incessantly complain about everything wrong with their lives. We vent about our problems, blaming everyone in the process, and often forget the role we play in every scenario. But if you think about it, putting around 7.9 billion people on one planet will inevitably play a role in the way each of us perceives our lives, because, inevitably, we will affect each other’s lives. However, as individuals, we should not be limited to playing the blame game, as it can set us up for a rude awakening that we ourselves aren’t perfect or always right. Instead, I prefer thinking of people as mirrors.
Does that mean nothing we see is really as it is? Hold your horses, it’s not all that bad. People simply help us learn more about ourselves, they reflect parts of us we sometimes don’t want to see and force us to grow and change.
“I can observe in others that which constitutes myself, and when that happens, I am metaphorically gazing into a mirror where my reflection is an affirmation that we are, together, unmistakably human.” [1]
In other words, it suggests that we all share common human experiences and emotions, and that by observing others, we get to know and understand ourselves better. By acknowledging that we are all human, we recognize that we are all connected and that we all share a common experience. We are mirrors to one another when we see elements of ourselves in friends, family, and even strangers. One may discover his or her own vulnerabilities, insecurities, and shortcomings when faced with someone fighting their own demons. It is often these traits, negative or positive as they may be, that we have lying within that allow us to sympathize, to aid, and perhaps more importantly, to reflect on our own selves and reevaluate our world view with every new interaction. When we interact with people, we can also gain insight into how we are feeling and help us identify emotions we didn’t know we had. For example, being around kind and compassionate people can bring out our own kindness and compassion. And this is why, if you don’t like your reflection, you can’t change the mirror. You can only change yourself.
We do not decide what the mirror shows us, but we do decide what we show it, and there lies a world of difference between the former and the latter.
[1] This quote was taken from the conclusion of “The Mirror”, a project by Brown University student, Ariel Schecter. URL: https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Joukowsky_Institute/courses/13things/7369.html