Stop Looking Through the Funhouse Mirror of Lies

Our reality is based on our story. What if we got the story wrong?

Photo by Darius Bashar on Unsplash

I look in the mirror this morning and I like what I see. The man in the mirror gives me a smile and a wink. I feel good in his presence. He makes me feel happy.

It took me a long time to be able to feel that way about myself.

There was a time when I didn’t have the confidence I have now. I didn’t look at the world and see all the possibilities in front of me. Instead, all I saw were limitations. Back then, when I looked in the mirror I’d think about the person I’d never get to be, and when I looked in the mirror, I didn’t like what I saw. He made me feel sad.

I don’t know that person anymore.

If I think back, I might be able to remember him, but I’m so far from who I was, I can no longer relate. He’s completely foreign to me. Nor do I find any familiarity with old acquaintances still stuck in the same exact place they’ve always been. I just don’t know them anymore.

Maybe I never did.

That was another reality. But something happened. My universe shifted. And that old reality ceased to exist.

If only there was a way we could reach through the mirror to ourselves back then. What would we tell ourselves?

We can see that other universe — the universe of our past, but our past selves can’t look through that mirror and look forward to see us — in this reality we call the present. It’s a one-way rearview mirror.

But wait. What are we even looking at?

The past is now nothing more than a series of events frozen in time, captured in hazy memories and strung together into a narrative that creates meaning. Remember, the base of the word history is Story.

If we can find the evidence to prove that the story we chose to believe about ourselves was wrong, the implications are massive. It can change everything.

We can’t change what has already happened. What happened shaped us. Our present is based on our past. Our past is defined by our story.