537:
We’re the product of our own perceptions - what I see in the
mirror is what I believe about myself and what I presume others see when they
look at me. I don’t see an evil face staring back at me, I see what is familiar
and what I want to see. I like to think it’s the very best, and like most of us
when mirror-gazing, I probably like most of what I see. Most of us like ourselves,
and if truth were known we are our biggest fan. If anyone else loves us it’s their
attraction to this likeable image, the one we can see in the mirror (which most
of us check out every day, just to make sure we’re still the same person as
yesterday).
Perhaps there are many sentient
creatures who can recognise their own image in the pool’s reflection. It
confirms the “I am” ... that is until a
distortion appears. Perhaps a breeze breaks up the flat surface of the pool and
the self-perception is disturbed. Or maybe for us there’s a crack in the mirror
which distorts our self-image. At that point we question what we see and go on
to suspect that our self-perception isn’t as reliable as we thought.
In our culture we believe that
the human is the grandest being. We let the mirror tell us what we want it to
say. But what a surprise when we see ourselves on video cam. It’s not the same
as the mirror. We see another ‘me’. It’s not the mirror image but something
more unfamiliar. It’s what others actually see. It’s the reverse of what we’re
used to (in the mirror).
The first thing I thought, when I
first saw myself on video was that my
own vanity had hoodwinked me. At that point, everything we see on screen is up
for grabs; we may start to see the connection between our own vanity and the
violence in our personality, which we never saw before. We see how we really
look (to others) and how we can reassess our own public image. And this mightn’t
be important were it not for the fact that one mistaken image throws light on
other more important, unnoticed mistakes, which have only remained hidden
because everyone else is making the same ones as we are making.
It takes just one surprise, one
shock, to bring us to re-examine what we took for granted before. We realise
that perceptions aren’t as reliable as we thought. We see how vanity shields us
from seeing our mistakes. We see that these are often mistakes of arrogance.
And it becomes clear that we are composed of attitudes and these are held in
place by our own vanity.
As humans we have violent and
violating attitudes, and spend our lives not realising it. We either knowingly
or unknowingly create self-delusion to comfort and cushion our lives. And we’re
so cushioned that we exhaust our credibility.
Time comes to settle accounts.
The mirror has shown us nothing true about ourselves. The truer visual
recording of our attitudes shows us that we can’t go any further down the road
of self-delusion and cushion-comforts. That’s surely one healthy step towards
self-development.
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