You have no idea how hard I’ve looked
for a gift to bring You.
Nothing seemed right.
What’s the point of bringing gold to
the gold mine, or water to the ocean.
Everything I came up with was like
taking spices to the Orient.
It’s no good giving my heart and my
soul because you already have these.
So I’ve brought you a mirror.
Look at yourself and remember me.

~ Rumi

As I am writing this article, I am in bed, which faces a mirror on the dresser. Reflected in its surface is the pale yellow wall behind me. I can see pictures mounted on its surface. Many are gifts from beloved friends. One is a butterfly painted by a high school classmate with whom I re-established connection after many years. Two others were brought back by another on a trip to Ireland. Yet another came from a former co-worker when I left my hospital job. Suspended from the ceiling are a dream catcher, two angels and a faerie. They are solid symbols of relationship with these people and with the energy the objects contain.

Mirrors are meant to be tools into which we gaze for the purpose of seeing beauty. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it, because often we use them to find fault. When I bring a mirror into workshops I teach and pass it around, asking people to ask themselves, “Who’s in there?” they often grimace as if looking for imperfections. Louise Hay encourages people to do mirror work and instead, tell themselves how wondrous they are. Not always easy.

Consider fun house mirrors which distort the image intentionally. Many live their lives as if that is reality. Stretched and out of proportion with the truth, which is that beauty resides within and radiates outward. Sometimes, even that radiance is too much for others to take in.

I have come to accept that each person in my life is a mirror, reflecting my own magnificence and yes, sometimes mayhem. There have been instances where their looking glass and my own are smudgy, as if finger prints have been placed on them and not cleaned off. When that happens, I turn within and ask myself what part of me are they bouncing back that I find distorted. So much easier to blame another for not being the way I might want them to be. So much ‘truthier’ to accept that they are me in that moment.