Reflections in the Mirror of Life

Waipa Post, Volume 45, Issue 3213, 6 August 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

Reflections in the Mirror of Life

SEEING OURSELVES AS OTHERS MAY SEE US. i

I NATURE'S PROTECTION AGAINST SELF-CON- f SCIOUSNESS.

MAY PROVE AN INCENTIVE AS WELL AS A | DETERRENT TO HUMAN CONDUCT. j

The desire to see ourselves as others see us is intense. Fate, however, has withheld the power, and her wisdom is to be trusted; it may be confidently assumed that human happiness is the greater without it. One renowned poet made something like a prayer for the power. He was convinced that the gift of it would free us from many a blunder and foolish notion, and to that extent he was right. People do occasionally obtain such glimpses, and these are useful as a tonic. But an endless series of glimpses would cause psychological paralysis. The savage man's sheet of still water,* the civilised man's mirror, bear an appearance of letting each see himself as others see him. The cinema enlarges the scope. But even the individuals who dan see themselves through these media have not by any means attained to their desire. Ocular impressions are strangely diverse, and however faithful photograph or portrait may be, it does not in the least follow that the excellence which is so evident to us is equally apparent to others. A simple test is the family album. Most people regard the specimens of their former appearance to be found there as libellous. With feelings of annoyance the alleged cai-icatures are surreptitiously removed.' Yet the cruel truth is these pictures show us exactly how others saw us only a comparatively few years before.

as we do at a smoke night among "the boys." The hard-head men in the city with whom he has been competing for a living all day get not even a momentary glimpse of that passionately affectionate individual whom his tiny daughter knows as she stands on the home doorstep waiting to welcome daddy home at night. Clearly before we could possibly see ourselves as others see us each person would require to be a kind of human chameleon.

As a generalisation it is unchallengeable that the power to see ourselves as others see us would help us to shed many of our irritating and stupid practices. Prosy bores would cease from boring, some women would abandon the latest fashion in hair dressing, and if certain people could hear themselves as others hear them, they would refrain from singing. But it is absolutely certain that the wished-for power would enfeeble rather than strengthen human character. The sight of ourselves as most of these others see us would utterly unnerve us. On one now long-distant day a little man of no physical presence entered the imperial city of Rome. If he had seen himself as the proud citizens saw him he would have shrivelled up under the sense of his own importance. But he did not so see. And to-day in practically every great city of the world the most impressivelooking building is associated with his name. His name was Paul, a name to which men have since added the prefix Saint. Others saw in Christopher Columbus only a foolish dreamer, deficient in sense enough to settle down comfortably at home. He saw not himself, but an undiscovered continent, and he sailed on. Had William Booth seen how grotesque and even vulgar his new form of religious propaganda looked in the eyes of the orthodox, he might have abandoned it at its initial stage. And the world would have been vastly the poorer without that Army of which he was the first official head. Happily the implicit suggestion that others always see us only disparagingly is unfounded. Life would have been a joyless affair for most of us had our mothers seen us only as others saw us. If one particular boy had seen her as others see her, many a happy but plain-looking wife would not to-day be wearing a wedding ring. The old gnarled-looking man and the whitehaired woman do not trouble as to how others see them; they do not even see each other as they are. The one sees still the stalwart, handsome youth; the other sees still the charming, graceful girl of fifty years before. Heaven's kindliest gift to them is their complete inability to see themselves as others see them. The thought of how their fathers and mothers, their wives and children, think they see them keeps a countless host of men ceaselessly striving to be that ideal person their loved ones foolishly but fondly believe them tobe. If only we could see ourselves as some people see us it would on many an occasion humble us. But it is not less true that, in a vastly nobler sense, the thought of how certain others think they see us should inspire us and cheer us.

Such diversity of viewpoint with respect to matters physiological and external suggests the hopelessness of people ever expecting to see their intellectual, emotional and spiritual make up as others see it. The dipsomaniac, whose pride is in his appearance of lusty health, is unaware that his friends refer to his floridity as proof his bachanalian life. The youthful criminal whose ideal is Al Capone does not see himself as the white-faced, hollow-chested creature he is, the victim of moral as well as physical under-nourishment. The maiden who by drinking innumerable cocktails seeks a reputation for gaiety does not realise what a poor substitute she provides for spontaneous girlish vivacity. All of them are heading for disaster through inability to see themselves as others see them. There are many historic instances of the same cause proving fatal to nations and to social classes. The Romans of the later Empire did not perceive that the virtue "of their forefathers had gone out of them, but the fact was proved by the onrushing, demolishing Hun. The courtiers of Louis XVI., with their artificial, wastful lives, did not see themselves as the starving peasantry saw them. It would have been well for them if they had. History would probably have been spared the disfigurement of the French Revolution. For generations on the Continent of Europe the traditional Englishman was considered unapproachable and imperious, always carrying about with him a trace of racial superiority. The Englishman was entirely innocent of any such intent, and yet on one occasion Gladstone made that characteristic the theme of one of his most famous philippics. As New Zealanders we affect to be independent and self-reliant, but how sensitive, and even resentful, we are when in speech or in print some visitor describes us as he or she sees us, and their description does not please us. If nationally we could see ourselves as other nations see us, Oriental nations especially, it might help us to be humbler and perhaps slightly more civil when we travel among peoples we much too readily assume to be inferior. In common fairness, of course, it is permissible to plead that that self of ours' which others see is not uniform. For the most part each of those others sees only one aspect of us. Our characters are kaleidoscopic; instinctively rather than .deliberately we adjust our' personality ; to our environment and.:to.the people we' meet. Our and our visiting pastor each see us.from different angles; in thVpresence of our somewhat puritanical spinster aunt, from whom we have expectations, we do, not converse or comport ourselves