In a previous post, I wrote about the value of seeing ourselves reflected through other people’s eyes. Author Julia Cameron calls these people “believing mirrors”—people who see the best in us and reflect it back to us.
There are people in my life who always have something positive to reflect to me about me, even though they don’t spend a lot of time with me. In other words, they experience only the “shiny” parts of me. Those connections and reflections are valuable, and I hear them with a strong sense of “If only you knew …”
There are others who have seen me at my worst and at my best. When they reflect the good they see in me, I have to take it more seriously. They have seen the shiny and the ugly. What they’re choosing to reflect to me is what they love about me.
In my musings on this theme, it occurred to me that when I look in a physical mirror, most often what I notice are the flaws in my appearance. Very rarely do I look at my reflection and say, “Wow, Janelle. You look terrific today!”
I believe we have the same experience with our “believing mirrors”. We hear what they reflect to us, and we so easily find reasons to dismiss it, as in, “If only they knew …” When the reflection comes from someone who has seen my various layers, it’s harder to dismiss.
And yet, I still tend to brush it aside. My instinctive reaction is to jump immediately to a silent mental listing of my failings and ways in which I haven’t lived up to the light they’re showing me. Sometimes it’s nothing more than a mental shrug away from the discomfort of being seen. Whatever the intensity of the reaction, is still allows that precious, loving gift from another to slide out of my hands.
How would my experience of myself change if I took even a moment to let myself feel the loving weight of the gift? Would my judgements of myself soften in that gentleness?
It is part of our survival mechanism to look first at what is wrong and what feels unsafe. Certainly feeling like a flawed human being feels unsafe. We fear that if we allow ourselves to believe in our own beauty, we will discover we were deluded. It takes practice, and reminders from our believing mirrors, to embrace both the beautiful and the imperfect within.
One of the greatest gifts bestowed on humans by the Creator is the freedom to choose. In this case, it’s the freedom to choose what gets my attention. Do I stay attached only to everything about me that I don’t like, or can I also allow myself to believe what is good and beautiful and true?
Leave a Reply