I woke up this morning to the realization that I am someone else. This epiphany came to me as I stared in the mirror and could not recognize the man looking back at me. He was much older than me, by 15 or 20 years at least. As I examined that face marred by time and unhealthy habits, it occurred to me that alas, it was mine.
I showered, half expecting that I might wash off the wear and tear but noted no discernible improvement. How did this happen? Just yesterday I was in my mid-thirties looking closer to 25. But it dawned on me this morning that I wasn’t. And the last time I looked 25, I was probably 25. How did I manage to convince myself all these years that I was perpetually a decade (or more) younger than that guy in the mirror?
I don’t know. But later today I’m going shopping for a new mirror. My theory is that over time, the fidelity of any given mirror’s reflective capacity for any given subject degrades in direct proportion to the number of reflections it registers as to that subject.
Wish me luck.
Antony. (From July 2013)
