The Mirror’s Lies
Break the mirror, save the face.
The popular man retains his influence through the insecurities, need for validation and curiosity of others.
Since when has being different started to become a problem? Since when have we looked to others for validation? Since when do we blindly accept answers to the unknown in the fear of uncertainty?
Man is a curious animal. When he starts to wonder about everything around him, when he gives some thought to why what he’s seeing is true, there’s an itch of desperation that slowly creeps up our subconscious. An irresistible instinct that latches onto the first thing that remotely makes sense. And at one point, people start to follow and forget to question, submitting to external pressures with due diligence. And this is when mere opinions dominate the masses, form ideologies, and split society. From plain human nature to a weapon. A weapon that puts humans on autopilot and rationalism in the backseat. And the irony? That we have led ourselves into this grave when man succumbed to his greed. The greed of knowing and not being left in uncertainty.
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We were all born equal, raised equal, ate as equals, yet there remained an elitist minority that dominated the masses. A minority who, upon realising and observing the thirst for knowledge the masses had, took advantage of the naive other by giving solutions, right or wrong, that remotely made sense. They dominate their opinions and start to monopolise the agenda, seeing others turn to them for answers and validation. With this realisation, exploitation begins, and the seed of herd mentality is sown.
And over time, the need to conform stopped being an obligation and became a conscious, self-imposed decision. Herd mentality stopped being forced on us, and became a decision we made, and that is when true tragedy struck — when we started to believe that shared delusion is better than self-doubt, when we started confusing belonging with being. Our rational instincts fade into socially accepted norms. Our creativity finds itself at a crossroads under the pressure of being judged. Finally, man loses his voice to the unison chants of their ‘friends’ and people start to change themselves to fit a mould created by people they consider ‘friends’, when a ‘friend’ would never make such a mould in the first place. The standard for being a good friend and being able to be themselves around their friend group changes until the very idea of ‘individuality’ and ‘self’ becomes an act. And sadly, the world applauds the illusion of difference, not its courage.
What simply began as a conquest of curiosity ended with the diminishing of individuality and an unmatched obligation to submit to what the people considered the popular masses, who were, in fact, just a minority willing to judge others, make them feel insecure, influence them with their opinions, their beliefs, and their ideas. The comfort of the numbers overlooked their need for an answer, and man’s nature of questioning and wondering slowly diluted into an echo chamber as conformity became mistaken for the truth.
Fearing isolation due to the harsh judgments of the public, man surrenders himself to a few in hopes of unnecessary validation. His heart latches onto anyone who shows him affection and makes him feel as if he belongs, becoming their most devoted slave. The fear of being left out supercedes everything around him, but what man doesn’t yet realise is that the fear of missing out, of being isolated, is much worse than being left out itself.
And as we wait in line to be accepted, we stop accepting ourselves. We see an unrecognisable version of ourselves in the mirrors, tainted by our every meeting, conversation and argument. And without realising it, the mirror starts to lie, only because we’ve taught it to, only because we seek comfort in external and judgmental validation of others.
The self is not lost in the blink of an eye, but through little compromises that we tend to overlook. The pieces of ourselves we trade away for the illusion of acceptance. And when push comes to shove, man finally realises the importance of those pieces, and that it was never society that broke us, but ourselves in trying to belong to it. The mirror never showed us who we were, but what we thought we were meant to be. And then man’s face slowly started to chip away, replacing his insecurities with ‘better qualities’, when it was in fact those flaws that defined him, until he looked at himself, unrecognisable. It was then that he realised that he had lost his uniqueness the day his eyes remained blind by the harsh shine of himself in the reflection of others, the day he turned around to hear a cheer from the gatherings far behind him, and the day he believed the mirror’s lies.
So, dear reader, let us look inwards to the heart that beats within, rather than the eyes that sear a hole right in, because the world will always look from afar, always treating you below par. The choice is yours — to look, or to see, for the mirror shall always hold up a face, the true question is whether it will be yours or not. Will you see those small flaws that make up your identity? Those small indents that make the world a reality?
