The Rule of 3 & the Mirror

Daily Meditation 671–12/28/2023

When you look in the mirror, do you see an ACCURATE perception of yourself? Or a grotesquely distorted perception?

When you stand in front of a mirror, what do you see? Beside the obvious (“Well, me lulz”), we don’t just see our face, naked body, or disheveled hair. We will often see something a layer beyond the physical, especially if we are in a tender or emotional place.

We will first of all see imperfections, generally. It is human nature for us to see our aquiline or bulbous or button or “Jew” nose and hate it. It’s our nature to see extra fat when there may be none. Our nature draws our eyes to our vitiligo patches, “fat ass” stretchmarks, receding hair, patchy beard, our “fupa” stomach, our narrow hips, our lack of a thigh gap, or our slanty “ching chong” Japanese eyes.

And these “imperfections” descend from our equally human nature tendency to compare the self to others. This is a topic for discussion in and of itself! Maybe tomorrow. For today — self-comparison is the only productive comparison there is.

But the layer “beyond” the skin we inherently see is our untapped possibility.

Just as we look at a stool or stump and “see” “sitting spot” or look at a slice of bread and “see” “sandwich” or “gluten attack,” we also see our failure to live up to ourselves when we gaze into a mirror.