Feeling pleased that the child does not rush to see in a mirror after the hair cut. Hand reaches up to feel how the locks have been styled, hair cropped close on the sides while longer hair on top continues to flop in all directions. He is satisfied.
Most of what he learns comes from the things not said and the things not done. The child already loves himself coming forth, that is part of being a human. Living here without a mirror, that inherent self Love develops purely, gently, without the information that a good, clear mirror provides. Catching one’s reflection in a dark window or the still water of a pond becomes a fascination and offers vague, easy images that won’t be locked in the mind for criticism. It feels good to live in a few areas of life, as an original human. Gazing upon one's reflection in a clear, modern mirror offers information that humans have only had access to in the recent past. Knowing each line of our own face and how the hair looks has come relatively recently in human culture. Living without a mirror allows sensory information from touch and imagination to take priority over what the eyes report.
Experiencing a smile as simply the pure expression of heart overflowing Love feels pure and untainted by one’s knowledge or concern about the details of what that smile looks like. Are there lines, does one eye squint, are the teeth straight or crooked, are they white enough? The child has permission to just smile, to laugh, to cut his hair, to just live and thrive as a human without the visual image of his own face burned into the mind. Seeing one’s own face multiple times a day in a clear mirror serves no purpose and presents information that cannot be ignored. Living without a mirror is an experiment to discover the freedom a human can experience when allowed to go without certain visual information.
Living without a mirror has been a huge change for me. It just happened. I left the city, my job, and public bathrooms when I moved into this house, onto this farm, in the deep country. There is a nice bathroom here but there was not a mirror hanging anywhere. Somewhere along the path a small ceramic plaque came to hang in the place one would expect to find a mirror. The plaque reads, “walk by faith, not by sight”. The lifestyle I was leading of not wearing makeup, and having beautiful hair instead of a hair style that required fixing and setting fit the culture around not using a mirror. Not having a job meant that it did not matter what I looked like since I was no longer representing my employer. I began living as a human representing God and my own true self.
Not a lot changed without the mirror as I continued to wash the face and brush the teeth and hair. The biggest difference came when occasionally I would find myself in a public bathroom or at a friend’s house in front of a clear, large mirror. Oh, look at that! I am quite pretty. Oh right, my hair is grey, I forget about that and all that it means in our culture, especially since I’m not even 50 years old. So many times since living without a mirror someone will stare or even comment on my hair and I can feel my brain reaching to understand until suddenly, I remember what they are seeing. The beautiful grey, silver hair that sprouts from my head. The lines on my face are deepening and there is no need to inspect them daily. My teeth are sturdy and comfortable, no need to see them with my eyes every single day.
There lives a trust, a faith that has developed in the place where my mirror used to hang. It’s so easy to Love myself. Its so easy to feel the Love that God feels for me. God doesn’t look at me with human eyes, and neither do I.
