Last night I curled up in bed and did something I haven't had time to do in months--I picked up one of my mother's magazine's (this month's edition) and read for fun. I came across an article about a forty-something woman struggling with her own concepts of aging. The woman she saw in the mirror just didn't fit with the woman she felt and thought she was. She complained about it to her father who stood her before a mirror with his hands on her shoulders and explained that we will forever be unable to see our true selves because "our spark" gets lost in our reflections. Nothing will ever compare to the experience of being and we will never see ourselves as we are unless we learn to look through the eyes of another.
I had a boyfriend in high school who used to call me "beautiful soul" in German. Although his part in my life was drastically short-lived, the name resonated in my head and became something I unintentionally aspired to be. I asked him why he'd begun calling me that (although I'm now sure it was just something he did with girls) he simply replied that "You are exactly who you are and you don't pretend or want to be anything else...that's beautiful." Now, putting all of S****'s later transgressions aside (he did drugs, dropped out of high school, traveled across country, came back and asked if I was disappointed I hadn't tried to change him--the answer, no), maybe our 15 year old selves were onto something back then. If nothing else, he gave me my first glimpse of what it was to see yourself through the eyes of a much-less-critical someone else and recognize positive attributes--something we often forget to do.
It's amazing how easy it is to forget that the people we see ourselves as in our mind and within the mirror often lack that intangible "spark" and fire that others are able to recognize. We forget to give ourselves credit for all of our effort, good intentions, and for being...well...ourselves. Who can be yourself better than you? :)
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