While overthinking receives attention from those it torments, the routinized thoughts we ignore create silent blind spots influencing our lives.
Freud told us love and work were the dominant concerns, the ones leading us to fulfillment or its lack.
One might add something to his idea.
Think of money, family relationships, and looking in the mirror.
The last of these is quieter than the first two. It is unlike those found in paychecks, on balance sheets, or the cash in our pockets. Nor does it occupy the emotive face of our child or spouse—their raised voices or weeping.
The silvered glass holding our reflection is everywhere. Indeed, the shop windows we turn toward offer a substitute opportunity to glimpse oneself. Such interruptions, whatever they may accomplish, are often intended by the passersby to obtain a momentary account of their appearance.
One might fantasize that such mirrored and windowed feedback is in the hands of two creatures who control the reflection.
The first asks the never-ending question of how we appear relative to how we hope to have fashioned ourselves. Insecurity plays a part, and the image can amplify this by providing an unpredictable, undependable, imperfect version of our exterior.
The second entity is the true mistress of the mirrors. Truth resides within her, a commodity hard to find anywhere these days. You’ve seen the movie version:
Time finds its way into our looking glass, too. It whispers its reminder that the bloom of youth has departed.
Life is odd. Moment attaches to moment in an unstoppable quasi-livestream slipping away from us. The mirrors await our presence even then; our heightening concern over the show we present to the world prevents us from leaving these objects alone.
We lose Time, we waste Time, we want injections to defeat Time, and surgeons will help if they can.
We take Time, but Time takes us over, luring our attention to the audience’s judgment of our appearance. That is, of course, until we become invisible—just another humanoid who blends into the crowd.
Before long, those around us stand out, not the striking, handsome, superior visage we once offered them.
Back home, both men and women are drawn to their image, housed in the rectangular object above their washroom sink. Selfies and Zoom meetings steer our eyes to pixels calling our name.
No day goes by without looking, peering, putting on creams and sunscreens while arranging our hair, and finding clothes to complement everything above the neck.
Below, too.
Best we accept aging and appearance as beyond full control: the clock and the calendar win in the end.
Intelligence and wit remain present when we come to terms with the changes Time brings. Friends often appreciate you because of your decency, kindness, generosity, wisdom, wit, and tender understanding.
Some of them will treasure that you “see them,” recognizing the preciousness of such an extraordinary gift, and your receptivity to their whole being.
Eyes wait for us to direct them toward the people we love, the hearts within them, and the beauty of their souls.
Freud was right about the significance of love and work.
But do add this, as Shakespeare put it:
“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.
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The Mirror Baby was sourced from Wikimedia Commons. It is the work of roseoftimothywoods.
Thank you for this interesting and important post, Dr. Stein. It’s something I want to save and reread again. This line, I just have to remark on: “Moment attaches to moment in an unstoppable quasi-livestream slipping away from us.” It’s just so good! A perfectly captured truth.
Thank you, as always, Lori. It was a line that I changed a few times. I am delighted that you like it. All the best.
And all the best to you as well, Dr. Stein!
Beautiful said. Beauty fades with time, but you’re absolutely correct in that true friends will appreciate you because of your decency, kindness, generosity, wisdom, wit, and tender understanding. If only more people would recognize, cherish, and foster such qualities in themselves.
We seem to have been constructed such that it is difficult to put aside appearances even for a second. I agree with you, Erin. The qualities you listed undergird the humanity within us. We need to remember that and bring them forward.
Time is a fleeting concept. Many of us have been guilty (myself included) spending too much time worrying about some minor imperfection of our exterior. I can’t help but think of all of the dollars people spend on beauty products, weight loss drugs, lyposuction, etc. Instead, we should be focusing on the interior, and how to be a better human. Hopefully, we learn that lesson while we’re still relatively young.
Well said, Pete. Discomfort in thinking about our mortality gets in the way of such lessons, doesn’t it? There are benefits to thinking about life’s limits if we can avoid being overwhelmed by such dread. Thanks for this thoughtful comment.
What a wise musing about what really matters. I love your paragraph, “Intelligence and wit remain present when we come to terms with the changes Time brings. Friends often appreciate you because of your decency, kindness, generosity, wisdom, wit, and tender understanding.”
Ah, what we (hope to) find when we whittle away at our surface! So good!
I like you use of the word whittle, Wynne. It is best to recognize what is under the surface before nature does too much of its whittling! You have made yourself a model of such goodness, for which I and others (I am sure) are thankful.
I can’t put my finger on it – yet – but your use of this phrase:
“Life is odd. Moment attaches to moment…” feels incredibly powerful.
A reminder that Time (capital “T” intended, as you used it) is a string of micro moments, sometimes arriving independently, sometimes attaching to other moments to create stories, arcs, “truths” we begin to believe about ourselves and others. But when broken down, examining each as a singular moment in the big “build” of our lives, some moments are less potent, easier to sideline or eschew.
I’m gonna mull about this for a bit. Thank you, my friend! A good rainy afternoon consideration over a cup of tea. That, too, is a moment! 💝
I am pleased to have gotten you thinking, Vicki, though you need no help from me in that department. What I was trying to offer had to do with what Heraclitus was getting at when he referred to time being like a river.
This ties in with ideas about change and our preoccupation with what we look like, especially as the world needs us to recognize things of far more importance.
We look at ourselves, in a moment when we need to pay attention to much larger concerns. I write this as the rain delivers its load of afternoon airborne dirt from wildfires far away. There is no time to waste,.
I’d like to think of mirrors as a reminder that we exist, that we walk among the living. As my aging image greets me every time I stand before the bathroom mirror, I remind myself to smile 🙂
I am sure your retain outward beauty, but it is the beauty and depth of your soul that is present in what you write, especially your concern for our planet. Thank you, Rosaliene.
I appreciate your kind remarks, Dr. Stein 🙂 <3
Many truths here, Dr. Stein, yet the issue goes way beyond the mirror. We live and grow up now in a culture consumed with all aspects of the self, particularly the face and body. Thanks to the proliferation of Instagram, Tic Tok, Iphone cameras, Selfies, filters, Zoom meetings, cosmetic procedures, YouTube influencers, self brandification, youth obsession, and now AI image creations, we spend more time looking at (and assessing) our own and others faces/bodies than anytime in history, I suspect. All this has contributed to teenage depression (especially amongst girls), body dysmorphia, diet culture, and the rise of medi-spas for all sorts of facial enhancements. The angst has gone beyond just feelings of aging–otherwise 23 year olds would not be getting botox and filler. Have you heard about “looksmaxxing”? People of all ages (mostly young) literally trying to morph their faces into a certain look (cat eyes) or ratio. People in their 40’s are now getting facelifts. There’s a very online popular nutcase (I won’t give his name more publicity) who breaks his jaw with a hammer so that it will grow back stronger and more masculine and thus attract those picky women who supposedly won’t date a guy unless x, y, and z. It’s truly madness out there and really hard not to be affected by its insidious nature.
You have added at least one more layer to the argument, Evelyn. Much appreciated and enlightening, at least to me. I read a NY Times article today that points out that it before the 17th century, most people had not seen there faces. As Shakespeare reminds us in his play “Coriolanus,” “there is (or was) a world elsewhere.”