The mirror concept is one that I have been ruminating on for a while now. I’m not sure I’ve got it figured out, but it does challenge me to think about things differently.

Essentially, the idea is that everything we see and experience in our life is an external projection of our inner reflection. When you look in a mirror, you see the external body that you inhabit and take care of.

If you feel like crap, you’re less likely to get up and put on your best outfit, hair and makeup. Conversely, when you’re feeling your best, you’re probably not going to be lazing about with an unwashed face, unclean teeth, and dirty clothes. (Reminder that these are general examples, so you don’t need to list all the exceptions you have, thank you!)

I struggle with this concept, and manifestation as a whole, because it is a little too simple and convenient for me. There are very real systems in place that make life harder for certain people, so I am always wary. However, it does give me a new perspective to consider things through.

At the end of the day, we are only ever going to be ourselves. We have our experiences, our education, our beliefs, our relationships, and our goals. These are the things that make us who we are. We may try to see things from another person’s perspective, but we are always going to be somewhat constrained by our own limited viewpoint. Yet, even this can be changed.

Sympathy is the ability to feel pity or compassion for others from our own perspective, while empathy is the ability to emotionally step into another person’s situation and consider from their point of view. To be honest, I don’t know if we can achieve true empathy, but it is still vitally important to try. Getting outside of our own head is a good thing, and exposes us to more of the world. Hopefully it will also make us better people too, who are more capable of handling difficult situations and emotions.

Back to the mirror concept, I’ve been thinking about this a lot in my own life, as I constantly feel misunderstood. I’m honest enough to admit I also struggle to articulate myself well enough, but there are times when I’ve had to concede that the person I’m speaking with simply cannot understand me.

This comes about most often when discussing relationships, especially with parents. I do not have a relationship with my father anymore, but I am surrounded by many people who seem to have the best father’s ever… Slight exaggeration, but the way they speak about their father’s is mind-boggling to me.

There is such trust, love, adoration, respect, and support. It is difficult for me to comprehend, having had such a different experience myself. Yet, I have seen this enough times in my life to understand that my experience is not universal, and that these good relationships can be quite normal. I’ve reached a point where I can listen to their stories without judgement or shock, but acceptance. I have had to learn to accept how diverse our world is, and how unique everyone’s experiences are.

Although, I have yet to receive the same sort of treatment… If and when I do share about my turbulent relationship, or even joke about the issues we had, it’s rarely met with anything but shock and or rebuttal.

One of the women at work loved her father so much that even years after his shock death, she still speaks about him daily. He was clearly everything to her, and I’m glad she had such a positive experience. When I joke about not listening to my dad, running away, or actively misbehaving, she is horrified.

‘Oh I’d never do that to my dad!’

‘My dad would never let me get away with that.’

‘We were always respectful of dad!’

‘But your dad’s your dad!’

‘You still love him though, I mean, he’s your father.’

Sigh. I did try to explain to her that its very different when your father is abusive and genuinely dangerous to you, but it’s like speaking to a brick wall. To her, there is just no possible way a father could be bad.

This frustrated me for a while, but then I started looking at it through this mirror concept. She had a positive relationship with her father, and thus looks at the world through that lens only. Everyone must have that because that’s all she saw/had. Her world reflects this belief back to her, so when I challenge her, she reaches a state of cognitive dissonance.

I had the opposite view for a very long time when I was younger, struggling to understand that fathers could be…good? That took some serious work to incorporate in my psyche as a young girl. Unfortunately, it was made even more difficult by the fact that I not only have to come to terms with the fact that fathers can be good, but also that I was unlucky enough to get one of the bad experiences.

No pity party here, I just kept digging. This is a situation where I had to recognise that I couldn’t have done any more or less to change my family’s situation. There was no reflection I could project (as a young child) that would change my father’s actions. He had his own self-image, his own projection and thus reflection that was creating his world.

It took a long time for me to be able to understand that I wasn’t to blame for things that happened, which is normal for most young kids in these situations. However, I also picked up a lot of unhelpful beliefs that began to shape my own self-image and view of the world. These caused me to make a lot of bad decisions too, and I’m still wrestling with them now.

This is a much more personal post than I’m used to writing, but I think it’s important to push yourself. I want to be a fearless creative, and that means releasing the fears I hold about sharing things openly and honestly. That’s the new reflection I’d like to witness. I’m still working through this concept, and figuring out its limits and how it works in practise. There is a long way to go, but life is in the journey.