These two quotes together are ones that have really helped me to contemplate my actions. I really try to think of those ideas when I find myself worked up about something. When I want to lash out at someone who has said something I think is ridiculous or stupid. If I can do it, pausing when that anger rises up and remembering this is often enough to prevent me from saying or doing something stupid.
The tricky part of this comes into play when we look at nature.
This picture is beautiful, I took it after one of our late season snowstorms in April this year. Take a close look at the trees. The trees here aren’t ones that show perfect symmetry, they are leaning and some are growing into each other, but overall they do have balance, they held up all that snow and didn’t fall over. If I were able to single a few of them out when they are fully alive in the summer they would look fairly symmetrical. The part you can’t see is the root system. While it doesn’t look exactly like the tree tops, there is some reflection in how roots spread underground. None of this is like a perfect flower that has amazing symmetry, but that brings me to the point of this post.
The reflection mentioned by the authors above is not perfect. It is not a total mirror image, it is like the reflection seen between tree tops and the roots, there is symmetry, but it’s not obvious with a quick glance. To me it explains some of the divisions in this country, if you read the same account of current political events going on (current or historical) you might wonder what is going on because each side of the story is so different and so far apart that it hardly makes sense to an outsider.
What I noticed is that the interpretation of the event depends on what mirror is being used, if you are on one side of a political argument you would tend to believe the storyline from that side. If you are a more neutral observer like I have become, you wonder how each side is able to sleep at night because one accuses the other of doing something they are ten times more guilty of doing and ignores the criticism that they are also guilty of the same thing.
The issue arises because we think we are looking out a window, but it is in fact a mirror. However, the reflection we see is distorted. It’s like the difference between the roots and the treetop. Very different but the same. Like a just about every treetop, one side may be a little lopsided but over all if you divide any tree right down the middle, one half will be roughly the same as the other.
This distortion I think is the cause of the anger or irritation. This is also behind hypocrisy, which is probably going to be a future topic for a post. If you are looking at a distorted mirror you can’t see that in most cases you’re in fact looking at the problem. Most often assigning blame or accusing someone else of some wrong (except for the most part if the person has actually physically hurt you), comes from the blurry mirror you look at. This is all very sneaky though because being humble and admitting you might be wrong is so difficult for humans.
Over the years that I have been able to think about this, I have yet to be able to find a good rebuttal that is able to disprove the two quotes at the top. The more I think about it, the more I am able to see that this tricky character trait of humans is constantly causing problems for people. The only solution I have found is to take a short pause or deep breath and then focus on what is going on inside me. It has taken time, but it has lead me to some very serene times in my life and the more I can practice this nonjudgmental approach to life the better my life becomes.
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