Hi all,
I just finished reading an article in the May issue of More magazine. I love this mag because it focuses on women over 40. The ads and articles for the most part show women (and sometimes men) who have experience written on their faces as well as in their hearts and souls.
Don't get me wrong, I also love the "young" mags too, like Allure and such, but More mag just gives me alot more "aha" (as Oprah would say) moments!
Which brings me back to the article that I just finished. It has to do with the spark in our faces that shows to others our unique energy. Here's the first few paragraphs, written by the author Kathryn Harrison that really made me rethink about how I perceive my own image in the mirror.
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"I'm 20 when my father looks at me and says, "You know, you've never seen your real self. I have, but all you've seen is your reflection in the mirror. An image that looks very much like you but isn't the same as you. Not really, not exactly."
"Why wouldn't it be exactly the same?" I ask, irritated because my father is always doing this: telling me why I belong to him and not to myself.
He explains that light is lost inside a mirror; a reflected image lacks the illuminous property of the object itself. As an experienced photographer, he conveys authority about such things. "Try it," he says, and he pulls me next to him before the mirror. "Look at me," he says. "Look at the real me here beside you, and then look at my reflection. They aren't the same. You'll see they aren't the same."
I don't want my father to be right. I don't want him to own what he says he does, the way I really look, leaving me with what sounds like an approximation of myself, inexact and indistinct, no better than a Xerox. But when I compare the actual man with his image, I see he's right-they aren't the same. The mirror father is dimmer, duller, not quite alive.
So it's true, what he says: I have never seen and will never see the real me."
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Okay, so this author, seems to have "issues" regarding her father, but looking past that issue, something just changed in my thinking, when I read those previous paragraphs. My natural personality is to have a very positive outlook on my appearance and my aging, but for some reason when I look in that darn mirror all that positiveness just flys out the bathroom window!
And this article caused me to realize why that is, it's the spark, the energy, the spirit, that God places within each one of us, that makes us truly beautiful. It cannot be seen in a reflection of a mirror. The mirror only shows the ravages of time, or the contours of our jaw line etc. but what really makes us who we are is the spark, the light!!
Believe me or not, but this revelation has freed me from the mirror woes. Of course, I will have days, I'm sure, where I will think "you old hag, you" lol, but my mind has now changed it's perspective and I won't let myself think that what I see in the mirrors reflection is really me.
I'll talk to you soon,
deborah
