Staring into a Mirror

All of us every day spend time staring into a mirror. Sometimes we do it to look at our face . Other times we do it while taking some type of action such as brushing our teeth, flossing, combing our hair, shaving, or putting on make-up. Each of those acts take only a few moments, but during the course of a typical week, I bet all those moments add up to a significant amount of time. In fact, I would go as far to say I bet if one were to share with us the amount of time we do spend looking at ourselves, we would find the total figure to be embarrassing. My unscientific conclusion is that we  humans are a lot of things and vain is one of them.

That vanity, I believe, tends to get in the way of our being better communicators. Staring at ourselves in our own mirror has become such a regular part of our lives that often we do not even think to take the time to gaze at someone else's reflection. This is unfortunate. My sense is if we did make the effort, we would see a face with many of the same characteristics that we have: some nice features, a few flaws, signs of attempted individuality, and indications of conformity as well. We would see areas that need improvement and others that are fine the way they are.  We would see a face both unique and commonplace.

Also, we would see a face which exhibits much feeling when circumstances arise or change. Such a feature, no doubt, would remind us of our own reflection during the course of our own day. From a communication standpoint, what may seem so obvious is actually quite profound. Our faces are much more similar than not. So, too, are we. From that perspective, perhaps communicating does not always have to be as much of a challenge as it sometimes is or feels. The face in the mirror that is our own is just as easily someone else's. Given that we all know how easy it is to communicate with ourselves, then maybe connecting with another is not necessarily that difficult either.