When you look into a mirror, you see yourself. But if you stare long enough, hard enough, you will suddenly feel uncomfortable, awkward even, not because of the act itself, but because you’ll feel like you’re gazing upon a stranger.
Who is this person, so familiar but also not so? You see yourself through the eyes of a stranger, and, like a first encounter, are filled with curiosity.
Who is this person? A doctor, lawyer, artist, farmer, nine to five cubicle worker or 24/7 adventurer? They could be anybody, do anything. Who knows what they’re capable of.
You blink a few times, and the trance is broken. It’s you again. The strangeness of the moment has passed. But a thought remains.
You are capable of anything, of being anybody and doing anything. You are a stranger to your true capabilities, but not to yourself. Like a dam, you keep a limit on what you can do, when really there are miles of unexplored ocean across from your familiarities.
If you keep at it, long enough, you can crack the dam, not flood with new possibilities but rather take them as they come, trickling in slowly but surely, until you forget that the dam ever existed at all.
Then, when you look in the mirror, no matter how long or hard you stare, you will only see the one thing you’re meant to see – yourself.
– Pihu J.