Mirror Man

‘It’s just a phase, You’ll grow out of it.’ Was what I told myself back when I was 13 or 14 years old. Puberty is widely perceived to be one of the most transformative phases in a human’s life, both physically and mentally. While assuming the same, I just went on ahead with life as it was, never bothered to stop and look back to see how much I was changing, or rather how much I had already changed. I believe that I didn’t see it this clearly then, and quite reasonably so, I didn’t have a reason to. It is now that I’m 18, I look back and realize that I made a misstep somewhere. Voice cracked, Shoulders got wider, but somewhere in all this chaos, I forgot to develop a personality for myself.

How do you feel after watching a very inspiring movie, or maybe a heavy action-packed movie? Do you feel the adrenaline rushing, or maybe your emotions gushing? There lies my problem. Just as most of us just feel that way and forget about it, my make-shift personality serves the purpose every now and then, and fades away. While this lets me be so many versions of me, it also adds to the agony of not being able to react to the same circumstances in the same way. How would you react if you realized that your mind is too fast at adapting to your surroundings? That it changes the way you speak to different people based on how they speak with you? And that you start using the phrases the other person uses, the way the other person speaks, and in the end, how the other person thinks about everything? While it does have its own quips and helps in making you more relatable to the others, it makes you more like the others around you. When the people around you keep changing too fast, or if you’re alone for too long a period of time, what would you do? You have nobody to reflect yourself on. And in extension, you have no personality of yourself. Would you still be ready to take on the world as a Mirror Man, mirroring the light and the dark, the emptiness too? And in the end, would you still be proud to be nothing but a reflection, an after-image?

When I was really young, I always Idolized my parents and my brother. Sub-consciously I became more like what they are, more than what I actually wanted to be. As and when I delved into the magical world of books, newspapers and television, I found more people to replicate, more feats to desire and achieve. I made up my views about things and events based not on popular opinion, but by putting myself in the footholds of my idols, and I guess that’s where I started slipping into a world of twists, twirls, and swirls that kept me in the loop of staying dependent on everyone else around me to stay and live a life as myself. When I first realized that I was actually just repeating what my closest friends do, and I’m speaking exactly like the one speaker I idolize, it hit me really hard. When the realization struck, it left me dizzy and confused. While the first of the many questions that popped up in my head was, ‘Is it normal? Do others face it too?’ and that’s when my other half of the journey to self-realization started. I kept questioning myself as to why did I not solve this problem before, but then again, Don’t you have to know that the problem exists before you can find a solution for it? As I tried to snap out of it, I couldn’t help but wonder why I did I ever develop this trait to start with? And when the answers started flowing in, I don’t think I was equipped enough to take it constructively. What I was facing, was just a very aggravated form of an issue almost everyone faces in the daily course of their lives. We are all biased, opinionated, and in the end, very judgmental as a social animal as our evolution would have it. We all feel the need to impress someone or the other at some point in our life, and it most commonly ends right after you’re done with that, but it carried on in my case. It might have been the greed to keep someone impressed at all times, or the insecurity of being treated differently if I ended up any different from what I initially was, but in the end, reality came crashing in, and I wasn’t ready.

I’ve read across many literary works that a major portion of our life is spent trying to figure out what we actually want to do. And here I was, trying to figure out who I was. I met many people through my formative years, arrogant, stubborn, kind, sweet, humble, annoying, all the same; and I went on ahead reflecting themselves on me and salvaging whatever tiny bits of their personality that I thought would like nice on me as well. It was almost as if that I was trying to make a pearl out of their grains of sand. To my surprise, it worked fairly well. I felt uneasy knowing full well every time I spoke; I was in fact aping someone I knew. As I kept digging up into my own past, and tried actively not to be like anyone else, I realized something strange, it was extremely tough, almost as if the brain was addicted to functioning like other humans around me. Knowing now that there wasn’t much I was able to do about the problem by eradicating it, I tried my hand at mastering it instead. If I was able to become like someone without even trying, could I possibly be able to understand how they think the way they think? Could I possibly now delve into whether there are other people like me out there? Other Mirror Men, lost in the world where there’s too much left unexplored. I might have been born two centuries too late to explore the earth, and two centuries too early to explore other earths, I believe that I was born just in time to explore the world, not the landscapes, but the people. I realized that it was just my personality that was mimicking itself, but there are people out there making those extremely important decisions in their life based on what the others around them behave and think. There are humans believing blindly in the words of those misleading leaders who strike a chord by simply bringing up terrors that will never happen.

I know I am a Mirror Man, and that I choose to live this way from now on. Salvaging everything that I can from each and every person I meet and making it my own little trait after slight modifications. I can survive by doing this, but can the world say the same? Can public opinion be swayed around the same way as my personality can be? Can there come to the fore a force of reckoning which can make the world turn a blind eye to the actual problems and simple guide them away from all these issues? And if that force does come about, will the world throw its weight around and fight? Or will it just stand and watch, while Mirror Men like me simply watch, learn and salvage. In our world where our memories are fleeting, our messaging ephemeral, and every relation transient, will a Mirror Man survive? And will all the others react and reason with imminent doom or will they simply divide themselves into the same old groups of left, right and middle, or will they ever live a moment together as one.

Mirror Man, Mirror Man,

Why do you flee?

Mirror Man, Mirror Man,

Will you ever become strong enough to decree?

Mirror Man, Mirror Man,

Will you ever break out of your own fantasy?

Mirror Man, Mirror Man,

Will you ever stop crediting everything to destiny?

Oh Mirror Man, Mirror Man,

Will you ever stop reflecting?

Oh Mirror Man, Mirror Man,

Will you ever reason with everything self-defeating?

Oh Mirror Man, Mirror Man,

Will the World ever stop and see?

What a farce it’s come to be.