Mirrors

“Mirrors”

“The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.”
    George Bernard Shaw

I have people in my life who do this for me now.  Well, they hold up a mirror anyway, it doesn’t always show a noble image of myself, but it reflects back what I need to see at that moment that I am not capable of seeing without help.

Emotions are funny things.  Webster’s defines emotion as: “a conscious mental reaction (such as anger or fear) subjectively experienced as strong feeling usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body.”  www.merriam-webster.com

That’s pretty strong stuff.  When emotions come up it is hard to be logical.  For most people it isn’t easy to simply shut them down and I happen to be “blessed” with the capacity to get readily in touch with my emotions at any given time and can also experience a vast array of them on any given day.  I am not saying that I am not capable of being logical.  I am also not saying that I am not capable of controlling myself, I am but it has taken me a long time to get to a point where I can recognize that I am being influenced by emotion and that I need to take a step back.

Over the past few years in recovery I have done a lot of work on myself.  A lot of self-reflection and self-evaluation.  I have looked at myself very closely and I have come to accept myself completely.  I still have bad days when I doubt myself and am not as self-confident as I would like, but I look back at how I used to view myself and know I see a different person now.  The warts-and-all version of myself is not as warty as I once thought and I have a lot more to offer than I ever gave myself credit for before.

That being said, I am still much better at being logical about other people and their struggles should they ask my opinion.  I can be logical with patients and sponsees and friends and see a clear path forward for them if they ask for my help.  I can offer assistance or an ear or advice should the moment call for it without getting my feelings too entangled when it is someone else I am thinking about.  I can hold up a mirror for them with love and tolerance and show them either their most noble selves or perhaps their not-so-noble selves if need be.

But, when it comes to myself and how I am interacting with others in my own personal life; well I don’t always have a clear picture.  I have come to realize that I need people in my life who will dare to do the same for me.  It is easier to hold up the mirror for a friend who is feeling down on themselves and remind them how great they are or can be.  The hard work comes in holding up the mirror when you need to show a friend they are getting it wrong and perhaps aren’t being the best version of themselves.  It is a fine line they walk because it has to come from a place of love, not a place a judgment. 

These are the friends I cherish most.  They are the brave ones.  The friends that I sometimes hang up the phone frustrated with. The friends I know in my heart are right and come to thank the next day, are the ones I need in my life because they reflect back to me who I am at that moment.  Find those people in your own life.  Find the ones who will hold you accountable and are doing so only because they want to see you rise.

I have to keep in sight who I really am at all times or I risk going back to that dark place of lying to myself and everyone else.  It is a place I never want to visit again, where I nearly lost who I am and everything I care most about.