I don't know what made me come up with this title but there's something that's going on in the back of my mind that I haven't given enough thought. I read about being two people at once in our brain while we are really struggling to emote ourselves into the world to other people and perhaps, to ourselves too. I have been visiting a place that has a lot of full-length floor-to-ceiling mirrors and I think they are making me very conscious of the images that keep relayed on all walls because everywhere I look, I see myself looking back with different eyes. It's very creepy to feel my own eyes on myself through these mirrors. I don't know how and when mirrors became an integral part of our human existence since I cannot recollect what our ancestors did without mirrors back then. But then we forget that the standards of beauty were yet to be defined back then. This post is not about body images/ beauty/ physical perfection or the likes but more about delving into the monsters created in our head by none other than ourselves.
It's a wonder that I am able to croon these thoughts when my brain is conjuring up an image of Wilde's Dorian Gray looking into his youthful self into a mirror and the infamous painting that lies clothed on the wall. This is so unbelievable that I am able to think of literary characters in this manner, clearly reinforcing my involvement with them and theirs in my life. As one of my friends pointed out, inner turmoil creates a lot of misery and melancholy and sometimes melancholy is the answer to the pain we feel in our hearts about things that can't be explained. I understand that I am being very cryptic here but this feels so unreal. I am haunted by those mirrors. Years ago, when I was truly afraid of heights, I still managed to climb atop the 19th storey of an under-construction building for a site inspection. The dizziness that engulfed me then also strengthened me to look above and beyond the fear that lay dormant within me. I was also a little timid about swimming in deep waters and conquered that fear too after pulling myself in a pool for solitary laps. I wonder what this fear of mirrors is really all about. I hope its not a physical fear of appearances because that would affect me for a long run. But it is indeed strange to find ourselves trapped within our images split everywhere in front of our eyes. One thing that I do involuntarily is looking through every mirror and the reflecting image to see different expressions in each of them. Perhaps my mind is playing games on me and while I do not appreciate it, somewhere it feels that our fear for self-perfection is greatly responsible for this image phobia we all derive at some point in our lives. And humans are no less monsters than the characters we've created in literature and so often become while living our lives.
Nice post. Reminded me of an article I wrote several years ago. In which, I considered mirror as a medium to reflect our image on to the public. That is, we constantly pretend to be someone else and then reflect that perfect image. But when we return back home, at twilight, as the colour fades, we care less about that mirror and return to be who we really are. The article is as cryptic as mine but I could connect to it in some way. :-)
ReplyDeleteI am so happy to know that you could connect with the thoughts expressed here. Often it becomes very confusing to differentiate between internal fears and images projected by our minds. They seem unreal yet have such a strong hold on our lives. Thank you for writing. :)
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