You Can’t Win Staring Contest With Your Own Reflection

I wake up with the bags under my eyes full to bursting with accumulated dream dew.

Day after day, the drips and drops of unfettered abstraction have carved their tributaries through my mind, coalescing into a mass of unacknowledged potential just under my line of sight. There it remained, like a predator in my periphery, turning me into stone with a gaze growing more powerful by the day. All while I refuse to look at its face. All while knowing that the stronger it gets the harder it not only is to ignore, but to confront.

And so, I have remained perpetually stuck resembling statuesque prey. Knowing that the second I lock eyes with that overwhelming primal force will also be the second it lunges for my throat.

. . .

This isn’t quite like the unspoken programming of the natural world. No, the rules and results of this quiet cat and mouse game we play with our better instincts are more subtle than the allure of wily woodland creatures and the promise of bloody jaws.

In the real world, when prey-sees-predator out of the corner of its eye and freezes in place, it instinctually knows that it has a split second to choose one of two options: run or die. It isn’t granted the mercy-curse of being allowed to remain there, frozen in place, for as long as it pleases while it makes up its mind. Yet, this is the delusion we feel entitled to bless ourselves with — a purgatory of indecision. We notice our conscience staring at us, hungry for decisive action, and suddenly the rules of the game change. Suddenly we opt out of the classic dynamic of fight or flight as if we pressed pause on the video game of our life because we’re too nervous to face the threat to our sense of self. The reality of facing our truth feels more like an acceptance of death than an opportunity to evolve because, in a way, it is.

Our current identity is at stake when faced with anything it considers a threat to its status quo. We see an opportunity for growth as something menacing in the corner of our eye and we refuse to turn our head to meet it face to face. We assume, like the vulnerable prey of the woods, that there could only possibly be two options when facing something so powerful, we either run for our lives in a never-ending flurry of excuses, or we accept our fate and allow our fear and hesitation to pursue a better life turn us resentful, bitter, and ultimately devour us.

So, we never look at it. If we never look at it we don’t have to make the choice between the lesser of two damnations. We can remain as we are, frozen in place and in time. Life streaking by us like an undulating brushstroke of time-lapsed snapshots and wasted creative potential. Safe outside the roar of the current, but stagnating while our bodies grow old and our minds stale. Our only hollow solace coming from a neighbor’s compliments on our personal horse blinders. Built over time to keep our eyes perpetually averted, to remove the temptation of glancing into the unblinking gaze of our true self staring daggers into the chasm where our heart should be.

We forget that this predatory self is in fact our self. It isn’t some overwhelming savage force aching to consume what we are, but instead is there to help us turn what we are into what we used to be.

The fear of being watched by this projection is that the ego we use to function in our daily life can’t be used in the transition from what is to what could be. Therefore, it freezes. The ego knows that there aren’t real teeth-in-the-neck consequences for remaining in this state, and so it encases itself in the amber of indecision in the hopes that it can live forever. And the real tragedy of our lives is the fact that with our help, it truly can. The ego achieves the immortality that eludes the physical realm, and eventually we fall into the eternal sleep while never having been truly awake, never truly in control of our choices.

. . .

I suppose the problem I’ve continually come across in my life is what to do about any of this. I can’t say I was ever really taught how to make my own decisions, and so it’s only natural for myself and countless others like me to fall into a reactionary state of living.

Something happens, something needs done about it. Something else happens, best not get involved. Keep to yourself. Keep yourself fed, healthy. Save your money, don’t take chances. Find stability in work, regardless of if you like what you do. You’re lucky to have a job, so keep your head down, work hard, and forget about what life could be were you to forgo convention for creation. Don’t waste your time with activities that don’t have your future in mind. The risk is too great. You could lose it all and end up with nothing but your lunatic scribbles and manic paint splatter. And what a shame it would be to feel so blissfully vacant of societal influence when everything you do should be imbued with a grand and culturally sanctioned purpose. Every choice you make should be a prophecy of parental programming fulfilled. You may be the hero of your own life, but only insofar as your journey leads you somewhere familiar, somewhere previously uncovered by others and utterly tame. No need for your jungle blade to be any sharper than your neighbors. The bramble has already been cut, the tangle long laid straight, the weeds pulled and forest flattened. You made it to The Promised Land™, and look at that, all you had to do was follow the footprints of uninteresting people to the land of spiritual amnesia. How does it feel? Have you forgotten who you felt you were yet? Don’t think about that. Shake it off like the slowly dissolving dream it is. You’re in the horde now, and when you’re here, you are no one worth remembering.

. . .

What can we do to avoid this fate? What signs can we spot to help us avoid veering into the spiraled lane of broken record relationships and vacant cultural hypnosis?

It’s not like it’s easy. I for one know just how hard it can be to take on the task of shaking off biological imprints and peer-to-peer validation. It’s been damn near impossible, yet here I am, at the mouth of the cave, tapping morse code against the rock walls in the hopes of discerning a guiding echo amidst the sonar. And instead of a sign for absolution, I am once again enveloped by the spiritual static that bounces back. The ever-present hum of cosmic silence. And with this unsurprising result of my meager efforts, I slip steadily back into old habits. I don’t step deeper into the cave on faith as I should. No, I allow my fear of the depths, of the uncertainty of that dark terrain, to hold my one foot in the light, in the safety, at all times. I know I’m not the only one who feels split in two, but the more we identify with and hold onto this idea of having an ineffaceable dual nature, the more we hesitate to break the cycle and finally step into that unknown wonder. The longer we wait to make an honest choice.

Again, how do we avoid this stalemate within ourselves? What can we do to finally pull ourselves away from the mirror and realize that we can’t win a staring contest with our own reflection?

The process and results will vary from person to person, but ultimately the answer lies outside of our framework. Beyond the walls of our personal experience that we’ve so carefully constructed about who we are, what we do, our hopes and horrors and secrets joys and hideaway skeletons. On the side of life where we seem to feel we are not, yet everything else is. The more I’ve allowed the thing I call Myself to fade into the background, the more I’ve noticed how the spectrum of abstractions widens and allows for more color to enter my life in a variety of forms.

From relationships to creative pursuits, from emotional exploration to stepping out of the house on a day better fit for a comfy jacket, it all feels a bit more…defined. The edges more crisp and outlines better accentuated. Lights are lighter and darks darker, as if my inner child finally listened to my old art teacher. It’s all a bit easier to see when you move yourself out of the way.

Mirrors aren’t the only mirrors.

Your phone is a mirror, the book you’re reading is too. The friend you’re talking to is a mirror, and so is the food you’re eating. Nearly everything we experience is a reflection of who we consider ourselves to be, and all of it carries just enough of that idea inside it for us to feel as if we must know who we are. In reality, that scattered mosaic of identity we walk through every day is simply one composition, one net of interacting strands and nodes that grants us the illusion of safety in a world unfit for the ego. And all of it, everything we experience that validates who we think we are, it all stands in the way of unfiltered experience just as our reflections play bouncer to the world of parallels.

We can give into a faith in ourselves without losing the necessity of the world around us. We can empower the form we find ourselves in without shunning those who don’t understand. We can have it all if we simply balance our need for collectivism and personal autonomy. When we have true balance, internal and external bleed into each other. The world will have a little more of ourselves in it and we will in turn have a little more of the world within us. As it should be, we will feel more a part of our environment, more a part of the experiences we have and relationships we form.

Learning how to balance the scales is the work of a lifetime. And well, seeing as how our only other options are either being psychologically divided and consumed by society’s horde of empty shells aching to fill their spiritual vacancy, or imploding like a dying star in a self-absorbed crumple of unadulterated narcissism, I suppose riding that line is our best bet.

—

This post was previously published on Change Becomes You.

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