The Mirror Of Life

Whatever shows up in the mirror of life has something to teach us about who we are. The reflection often points to parts of ourselves we would never notice on our own, and those parts arrive through the people and events we run into.

That mirror does not hand the same image to everyone. Researchers who study memory have found that witnesses to a single event walk away remembering very different things, and what each person retains tends to track their own interests and habits of attention. Imagine a murder inside a mansion, with three people present besides the victim's relatives. An interior decorator leaves fixated on the ghastly furnishings and the dreadful taste of the man who owned the place. A mechanical engineer notices how stifling the room was, concludes the air conditioning had failed, and thinks about how quickly the body will break down in that heat. A psychologist, meanwhile, might register that the victim's family members in the room did not seem all that shaken. Three people, three entirely different takeaways, each shaped by the lens the person brought with them.

The mirror does more than echo our interests back at us; it also places certain things and certain people directly in our path. People with a religious or spiritual bent sometimes read this as purposeful, as if what arrives in a life was meant to arrive. Someone who feels awkward around people with developmental disabilities may end up raising a child, or a grandchild, with Down syndrome. A person touchy about perceived slights will read insult into a comment that most people would wave off as harmless. Pushed far enough, that tendency becomes paranoia.

What you say about a situation, or about another person, frequently reveals more about you than about the thing you are describing. Take someone who finds overweight people repellent and says so: that reaction can be covering an eating disorder and a private dread of gaining weight. So the remarks you make about whatever the mirror sets in front of you may expose things you would rather keep hidden. The same information is also usable. Pay attention to what you single out and criticize, and you have a way to understand yourself better, maybe even to shift how you act and how you see.

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