"The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play."
Have you ever looked in the mirror and asked yourself Who am I really in a brief moment, where time and space seemed to disappear and you suddenly felt that you're the main character in a movie and your whole life is the setting?
It happened to me a while ago before brushing my teeth. I was very tired. I looked at the mirror with my weary eyes and drowsy head and I suddenly started gazing at my face. I thought: Is that me? Is that how others see me? Who am I? Am I beautiful? Can I be beautiful to others? So many questions running thru my head in that moment. In order to get my senses back, I had to shake my head. I brushed my teeth and went to bed.
But the questions remained. Especially How do others see me is a permanent one. It's a question that helps me to behave well and to be respectful and mindful of others. Don't we all want to look good in the eyes of others? And it doesn't mean we're overly vain, it's a normal human condition, both sociological and biological. Of course, if you overdo it, the result will be the opposite. People will realize you try too hard and you're being fake. So you need to find a balance between careless and fake. I think most people are somewhere inbetween (including myself).
But for the new generation, the internet became a pool of vanity. Suddenly everyone's a model, we all pose, we all put the cutest, the prettiest, the handsomest pics on our Facebook profile. We're all fashionable, we're all sociable, we're all smart (thanks Google and Wikipedia), we're all the coolest peeps in every story we post on our blogs and so on... We can create a whole virtual identity, an altered one (a fake one?), an exaggerated one, but that won't change who we really are. Of course I'm not talking about everyone, but about those who are trying too hard. Be it online or offline, we can't play a role 24/7. At one point we have to face ourselves. We have to look in the mirror. It's a sobering and humbling moment.
Even Michael Jackson once sang: I'm starting with the man in the mirror, I'm asking him to change his ways...
So... who are you really?
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Have you ever looked in the mirror and asked yourself Who am I really in a brief moment, where time and space seemed to disappear and you suddenly felt that you're the main character in a movie and your whole life is the setting?
It happened to me a while ago before brushing my teeth. I was very tired. I looked at the mirror with my weary eyes and drowsy head and I suddenly started gazing at my face. I thought: Is that me? Is that how others see me? Who am I? Am I beautiful? Can I be beautiful to others? So many questions running thru my head in that moment. In order to get my senses back, I had to shake my head. I brushed my teeth and went to bed.
But the questions remained. Especially How do others see me is a permanent one. It's a question that helps me to behave well and to be respectful and mindful of others. Don't we all want to look good in the eyes of others? And it doesn't mean we're overly vain, it's a normal human condition, both sociological and biological. Of course, if you overdo it, the result will be the opposite. People will realize you try too hard and you're being fake. So you need to find a balance between careless and fake. I think most people are somewhere inbetween (including myself).
But for the new generation, the internet became a pool of vanity. Suddenly everyone's a model, we all pose, we all put the cutest, the prettiest, the handsomest pics on our Facebook profile. We're all fashionable, we're all sociable, we're all smart (thanks Google and Wikipedia), we're all the coolest peeps in every story we post on our blogs and so on... We can create a whole virtual identity, an altered one (a fake one?), an exaggerated one, but that won't change who we really are. Of course I'm not talking about everyone, but about those who are trying too hard. Be it online or offline, we can't play a role 24/7. At one point we have to face ourselves. We have to look in the mirror. It's a sobering and humbling moment.
Even Michael Jackson once sang: I'm starting with the man in the mirror, I'm asking him to change his ways...
So... who are you really?
[Photo: My sunnies]
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