Mirror, mirror on the wall

thoughts on being careful what you ask for This saying is known to virtually everyone, and is forever visualized for us in Walt Disney’s classic film, Snow White.
Who can forget the witch’s angst at discovering the truth about her most treasured misconception of herself; the Mirror’s message of truth enraging her. Leading her down a wicked path straight to the cottage of the dwarves.
The object lesson of the tale is that out of control vanity can become evil and do all sorts of nastiness to one’s neighbours. But this is only one dimension of the story.
The second dimension is more subtle. We all look in the mirror with the same amount of denial and self delusion that the witch had. Oh, it may not lead us to actual murder, but there is often “murder in our hearts for the judge” …or bank teller, spouse, children, et all.
No, like any good fable, this one is about all of us, not just that witch of a mother-in-law you’ve got on your hands. Or that rogue dictator you’ve got in the nation next door. This is definitely a be careful what you ask for sort of event.
So we see that by asking the mirror to show us the truth (about ourselves) we’ve skated onto a late winters’ pond. One slip and we’re going to be carried down stream by the thaw swollen torrent.
Conversely it is good to wipe off the mirror and have a fresh look at ourselves now and then. Each year at this time I do a self inventory and ask the divine mirror to sort it all out for me, which He is always faithful to do. Even though it often hurts a lot.
However, its work brings me back to the right path and keeps me from the slippery slope of blaming others for my problems. Sometimes the mirror shows us our not-so-nice face.
Which brings me to our image here. It started as one of those “face plants” on the ole’ copy machine some 13 years ago. At the time I was making all kinds of crazy self portraits. But, I was also going through a heart wrenching divorce.
Even though I was clowning around, a wounded murderer is clearly etched in this face which gazed back at me from the ‘mirror on the wall’ so long ago.