You are preparing to go out. You’ve picked out your clothes, made your hair, and then stood in front of the mirror. You are looking at your reflection in the mirror, and the clothes on your reflection seem mismatched to you. Maybe it’s their color, type, or possibly the style, but something is annoying you. You are reconsidering it, checking it over once more, and you decide, let’s say, that the colors don’t match. Then you say to your reflection, “Look at what you’re wearing! What a strange choice of color. I think you’d better go get changed! I can’t go out with you wearing those close. You either change your clothes or stay at home.”
Your reflection nods and goes off to change while you wait in front of the mirror. It comes back wearing an ensemble of nicely matching colors, just as you requested. You say, “Well, everything’s fine. We can go out together now.”
However, your reflection starts speaking this time, “Please don’t take offense, but I can’t go out with you now. Look at us! We aren’t harmonized anymore. I went and changed, but you kept the same clothes. We cannot be together any more. You can stay here and continue criticizing and trying to change your next reflection as well.”
The reflection then disappears from the mirror. As you stare at the mirror in confusion, maybe even grumbling at it, another reflection appears in it. When you look at it, you see it’s wearing the same odd choice of clothes from before. Moreover, its hair looks bad as well! Go on! It’s your next chance to change it and correct it. You even put your hands into the mirror and correct every wrong thing with them. Until…
How rational is this? How familiar is this nonsense to you? Think about it, and look at your reflections in life rather than in the mirror. Look at what you are going to see, what you are going to want to change. For each point you would like to change, just imagine you’re looking in the mirror like before. In reality, your reflection never changes or leaves you, but your reflections in life may change. They may change, but do you think your next reflection won’t show itself to you again unless you change? Your reflections in life will change over and over, until…
…you stop struggling with them and start changing your own clothes, own hair and everything you see and do, rather than that of the reflection in the mirror. Keep changing yourself until you see the reflection you want to see in the mirror. Once you like your reflection, one tiny mismatch won’t bother you at all, and once you succeed in accepting and even laughing at these imperfections, you can make peace with the mirror.
Greetings from the depths of the mirror…
