Thursday, February 28, 2013

Mirrors

Mirror Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?
                                              
I felt sad for the Evil Queen sometimes. To put all your faith on a piece of glass...
What happens if it shatters?

The story doesn't really end there though does it?

After all we can travel through the looking glass:

Traveling through the mirror, wouldn't it just be a reflection of our own world?


Find what we desire most:

Why is a mirror the one to show us that? Does it mean that the answer is inside of us?


or fall in love like Narcissus:

I read something interesting once, it was a new ending to the tale of Narcissus. After he died, the wood nymphs came out to mourn and saw that the lake had transformed into a lake of salt water.
They asked they asked the lake why it wept.  
It said it was weeping for Narcissus.
They responded that they also wept for beautiful Narcissus
and the Lake asked if Narcissus was beautiful.
The lake should know better than anyone though, should it?
But it responded that it wept not because Narcissus was beautiful.
But because it could see it's own beauty reflected in his eyes.

Strange new take, but for some reason it struck me.
Just as the Lake was a reflection, so was Narcissus.
Which one was truly beautiful?

Mirrors to me are quite a different thing though.

Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.
                                                                             ---Samuel Butler 

There it is. A mirror reflects the surface of things, not the truth of things.  We look to mirrors to reveal things, to show us things.
Perhaps what a mirror shows is simply what we see, the surface of things.

How we interpret that is entirely up to us.
Regardless what is shown in a mirror is not the whole truth, it is a weak mimicry at best.

Mirrors are meant to show your soul when you look into them, but I don't think that's true.
Can a simple reflection encompass the depth of a soul?

I choose not to believe so, instead I choose to believe that mirrors will show us our outer selves.

And we have to do the actual work to discover our inner selves.

2 comments:

  1. But isn't it important that we are able to see our outer selves? Isn't the surface just another layer of truth? Being aware of how you perceive yourself outwardly is definitely a way to discover your inner self. So a mirror is a tool, isn't it? When I look in the mirror, I don't always see the entire picture. I notice different things every time. So it's not just a surface. It morphs constantly based on how I'm feeling inside.

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  2. Malini, your posts are really interesting and I love how this post connects to your last one. Everyone wears a mask all the time, but that mask is also exactly what we see in the mirror, and what other people see on the outside. A mirror may not be good for looking inward, but it's great for looking out to see what other see when they look at you. I think in this way mirrors are a very self-conscious thing, whereas masks are a creation by your inner self to create your outer self.

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