Mirror | Talk
When you look into the mirror, what do you see?
“Should I wet it down or part it?,” the boy asked as he turned his face from side to side with deep contemplation.
“Part it, and then gel it,” the other boy replied as he pretentiously pointed to his own hair for reference.
The rugged boy sighed. “I hate using gel. It’s so uncomfortable and unnecessary.”
“Well, you can’t go to school looking like THAT. You look like you just woke up.”
“That’s because I DID just wake up,” the rugged boy sneered back as he picked up the almost-empty hair gel container.
“There. Now what’s next?,” he asked as he squinted suspiciously at the vaguely familiar face.
“A lot — You have a long way to go. But first, take off those hideous glasses and put some lotion on your face,” the boy in the mirror answered, almost immediately.
“Great. I already have chemical in my hair and now I’m going to have chemical smeared all over my face.”
“You’re the one who asked,” the other boy clapped back, “Besides, don’t you want to be presentable like me?”
The rugged boy stared at the other boy in frustration. The boy in the mirror had slick brown hair, perfectly parted to the right. His freshly shaven face revealed flawless tan skin, and his contacts revealed two light green eyes that looked like shiny little emeralds. Everything about his face was symmetrical and carefully adjusted. Even his smile — if you could even call it a smile — was adjusted. His expression was one of indifference, frozen in time like that of a carefully-sculpted marble statue.
“Well, what are you waiting for?!,” the mirror boy exclaimed, interrupting the silence.
“I-I don’t know what’s easier — ,” he finally confessed, “being you or being me.”
“That doesn’t make sense… Besides, good things don’t come easy. So, what will you do?,” the mirror boy snickered, leaning forward curiously and pressing his face against the mirror.
After some thinking, the rugged boy pushed the lotion aside and dunked his head under the running sink faucet. After washing out the gel in his hair, he picked up his head and aggressively patted down his hair with a towel.
“I guess I’ll be me,” he finally said, as he picked up his plastic-framed glasses.
“And why’s that?,” the other boy asked in astonishment.
“Because at least, then, I know where to start,” the glasses boy replied as he turned his back to the mirror.
“And besides,” he added with a smirk, “It’s way too much effort to be someone so boring like you.”
A mirror isn’t just a reflection of an image. It is the visible manifestation of self conflict between the person that you currently are and the person that you ‘want’ to be. Whether that ‘want’ is driven by self confidence issues, other people’s expectations, a desire to fit in, or independent desire, a crossroads of conflicting desires exist in one way or another, and the mirror shows us who we decide to be every day.
*Self-reflect on your reflection*
