One slightly tipsy evening, I was struck with a thought. “I can never fully see myself.” What I see in the mirror is not me but rather, the light I am reflecting off into the mirror that bounces into my eyes. Optical nerves convert the light into electrical signals that travel into my brain, which encodes it into information, an image. Elementary science. Seeing my own physical appearance is simple enough. Science doesn’t really say anything more though. The guy I see in the mirror isn’t that bad looking, far from being an Adonis but decent enough. What I judge though is not myself but rather, a reflection of my self that I see. Any judgment is made on the basis of things outside my self.
The mirror speaks of my appearance- an objective reality. As we know, we are more than our objective realities. But how can I know what lies beneath my surface?
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, I will not talk to you because I haven’t lost my mind (yet?). I will not hope that through some hocus-pocus, the mirror will reveal to me whether I am good or bad. No, to find my inner self, I must go outside of myself. I must look at the Other. As I look around me, what can I say of the people around me? Are they happy? Do they despair? Have I a hand in their happiness or in their despair?It is perhaps through this type of questioning that I can find my self.
I know now that I exist. Here I am in the world, interacting with it, and being aware that I am in it. What luck!But now I must ask, how do I exist? Have I done good for the world or did I make the world good for me? I have an ideal identity of myself in mind but it is only through seeing how I interact with the world can I approximate how much I resonate to my ideal.
I think of one of the prayers Doctor Garcia recites before class.John Donne’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."
I am in the world. Everything I do has an effect. Everything that I do not do also has an effect. Many suffer unjustly. Many abuse power. Many die in vain. I am partly at fault because of my actions or lack thereof. Every second that I allow to pass where the Other suffers is an opportunity lost. I am part of the problem but I believe that awareness of my responsibility and accountability to humanity is the first step to my taking part in a solution. And in taking part in a solution, I believe that I move closer to my ideal identity. An identity that is good.
