our true mirrors ...

yes, i'm on the topic again ... it seemed to be the theme of the night. my friend and i went out to celebrate his birthday and couldn't watch what he wanted "bangkok encounter" ... so we settled with watching "mirrors". subconsciously, although we didn't intend to, we were again on the topic of mirrors. i even forgot that we were watching mirrors. we were so engrossed in our talk that we almost missed the movie. we came in just minutes before the opening credits. we were laughing.

but before we came in, we had arrived 45 minutes early and he had taken that opportunity to talk to some of his friends on the phone from his native land and i sat munching on the popcorn while seated in the cinema chairs in the lobby. we listened to the "elevator music" while watching trailers that didn't match the music. hehe. so, after his phone call, we got to talking about my writing. he said "are you ready to be criticized?". i said "yes". he said "it's when you can defend your thoughts that you are a writer". i think i already see a future critique - the good type ... not the bad kind. :)

then he asked me "would you change if your friends told you to?" i stopped to think to myself ... "would i?" i answered "no." i will not try to please people just because they want me to be someone they want me to be. he said "what about if two or three people say it? would you change?" i said "it depends on who's saying it and what they're saying ..." he said that these people who only mean good of course who try to "change" us are our true mirrors ...

then i was reminded of the johari window. it's a psychological tool used to explain the areas known to a person, known to only others and not to the person, an area known to both and a blind spot - where no one knows. how do we truly know ourselves? he was right ... by mirroring.

we rely on information we know about ourselves and confirm them by the validation of others. as the area of the known (to the person) and the known (to the other) mesh into the known to both ... then we begin to see a clearer picture of who we are.

i was also talking to another friend earlier about defining relationships. we, in tandem with others, find a sort of collective meaning by eliminating that blind spot. therefore, we open the window of ourselves to reveal the real us. that when we look in the mirror, it's not some distorted image of what others think we are, or what we think we are but a uniform image of who we are based on what we know and what others know of us.

isn't it nice to live in the light? with a big blind spot, there's a lot of feeling in the darkness. there's a lot of searching. but through time, through our friends, family and our true mirrors who take courage to correct our image for our own sakes and not for the world's then we can begin to reflect our true selves.

have you looked in the mirror lately? what did you see?