Do you use relationships as your mirror?

There's a photo of me as a toddler---maybe a year old---where I'm sitting on a kitchen chair in the yard, holding a small, handled mirror. The story is, giving me the mirror was the only way they could stop me from crying long enough to have my picture taken.

For much of my life I looked to others to tell me who I am. My own mirror was murky, clouded, it was unable to tell me who I was, and others' apparent opinions about me didn't seem to confirm what or who I thought I was either.

I looked to others to reflect me to me because I wasn't sure who I was. I know this now: Nobody can reveal to me who I really am---how could they know if I don't know myself? So what I see in the mirror another holds up for me is my own self doubt, my questions, my uncertainty about who I am, perhaps (as in a funhouse mirror) magnified a thousand fold. And on top of that, most people are only capable of seeing me (or anyone) through their own filters, through the filmy substance of their illusions and their perceptions about who I am, or should be. So by the time I get the reflection back, it's my questions and my self-conceptions interpreted through their filters, overlaid with their illusions and perceptions...

So no, I don't depend on others to mirror myself back to me, not any more. I don't even depend on what I see reflected in my own mirror---I have looked at my own reflection and seen a complete stranger. The thing is, I have my own filters, I see myself through my own illusions. And in a way the reflection itself is an illusion. If I pay too much attention to it I'm lost; the longer I look at the reflection the less sure I am, and the more I feel separate.

Me and reflections go back a long way, and if I've learned anything it's this: I can't rely on the mirror---whether glass, human, or whatever else---to tell me who I am. I get sidetracked, I get detoured too often if I do. I get lost in the illusion. The answers are within. No need for mirrors there.




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