Man In the Mirror

I'm sure if you are anything like me, you've looked at your image in the mirror thousands of times. Most of us stand in front of the mirror each morning and marvel at just how "bad" we look as we wipe the sleep from our eyes and try to get ourselves ready for whatever the day holds.

If we let the world's standards get a hold of us we worry about the pimple on our nose, the gray hair that appeared overnight, the sag in our cheeks. If it is a full-length mirror we focus on how fat we are and how we just don't look like we wished we looked (usually based on some model that we saw in a magazine or star that we saw on television).
I'm guessing that sometimes (maybe most times) we have a tendency to look in that mirror and look right past what we really see and instead focus on the image that we think we see. The same can be true when we look at our character. We often are looking in the fun house mirror that distorts our image of ourselves. We see the flaws exaggerated and the strengths minimized.

Part of my summer experience is self-evaluation and self-realization. I spend an hour each week with my supervisor talking about what I think I've learned in the past week (sometimes I am more accurate than other times). It is very unnatural for us to look at ourselves in this way, but it is also a good practice.

In this past week I realized that I don't always see myself the way others see me. I had one of the social workers ask my advice on how to handle a tough group that she was working with. What could I offer to her? Certainly she had been at this longer than I had. My supervisor pointed out that she felt she could trust me, that I would be, at the least, a sounding board for her. Hmmm ... I never thought of that. I always thought of trust as something that would come after a greater amount of time, I've maybe been in the same part of the Hospital as this social worker for 3 hours!

I also had the experience of meeting with an older gentleman who told me, "I get to know people by reading their faces." So I asked him what he read in mine and he replied, "You're a gentle, caring person who isn't going to take shit from anyone." Hmmm ... all of that came through my face, huh? Maybe he was just shining me on, but I want to think that he is pretty accurate.

When I look in the mirror, these are not the things I see. I see the receding hairline, the need for a shave, maybe a pimple that appeared over night, lines that are starting to form around my eyes (I guess they will become wrinkles at some point), but I don't see the trust or the love that others see. Maybe that's why we surround ourselves with other people, so they can show us what we don't see in ourselves.