What is it about our psychology that allows us to always see our ideal self? I have a friend, about 75, by anyone’s standards an older gentleman. Yet he sees himself as young, dashing, and muscular.
I also find it hard to see my current incarnation when looking in the mirror. Only occasionally, when I catch a view on a reflective surface do I see myself, or so I believe, as others may. This happened last night when I noticed an older man on the sidewalk and then realized that I was looking at myself in a reflective shop window.
I could be wrong. For example, my 75-year-old friend has maintained his youthful personality despite the onslaught of time. Drinking, holding himself with a bit of a swagger and feeling that young women still find him attractive. This last attribute has been the occasion of some rather embarrassing moments, but somehow he gets through these unfazed.
The world’s our mirror, and what we see and don’t is as much an image of who we are as any reflection in the looking glass. What we see when we gaze out at the world is a definition of who we are. And what we choose to include from that mass of objects in our lives is our attempt to mark ourselves off from the surrounding chaos.
This may explain the various ghettos, both rich and poor, that constitute our world. People construct and then live in mirrors that reflect themselves as they wish to be seen. This implies that we include and exclude things from our lives to have a reflection of ourselves that we feel good about. This was summed up in a chance remark I heard on the metro. A well-to-do lady was speaking in English in a loud voice, and she proclaimed, “After all, people stick to their own, do they not?” Harsh but true. Maybe this explains the current violent stratification in American politics. “I’m this kind of person, not that kind” is the message one reads everywhere.
As I look around my apartment, I see it’s my mirror. It hasn’t changed much since I was 18, it’s just been imported to France. Everything here reflects one thing: me. There are my paintings, the piano, the books; it’s all me, symbolized by various material objects spread out like a yard sale. If certain objects were introduced into my space, I’d feel under assault. If by law I was compelled to have a TV set, or a full collection of Stephen King novels, or a poster of a Korean boy’s band on the wall, it’d be like Chinese torture. These objects could break me: I’d confess, recognize my errors, and promise to be more ideologically-aligned.
A friend once bought the house of a woman who’d recently passed away. It was sold with all the possessions the woman acquired during her long life. The house wasn’t just a mirror of her choices but also of the various stages of her physical decline. It was the museum of her life. She’d begun living on the top floor and as the years passed, she moved downwards, from floor to floor. Finally, she had a bed on the ground floor. Her whole life was there, the short-hand classes she’d taken as a young woman, clothes dating from the 1920s to the 1980s. Old magazines, a Victrola, and a collection of 78 records, popular hits from the 1920s and 30s. I felt the whole place should be transferred to the Smithsonian. The relatives came, took a few objects, the solid oak dresser, the tall vanity mirror, the Victrola, and left the rest to the new owner. He threw everything into a dumpster.