Who is that in the mirror?

With the coming of the moon, there was much to be felt, as some of us are naturally emotional people that believe in things and believe in the moon. I don’t know how true it is, but someone recently told me that “70% of the body is water, and if the moon is full, the body gets ‘pulled’ and strange things happen, as with the waters of the ocean and the tides, so too with the body.”
I think that happens to me every time the moon if full, I get pulled into life and for some reason I am the most alive that I am during the month, and that doesn’t necessarily mean that those moments are joyous or filled with ecstatic teenage fun that riddles through the weekend at a thunderous pace.
It was quite the opposite experience this time, granted that I found myself knee-deep in a pool of introspection that relentlessly brought me to tears several times over the weekend. This isn’t my diary, so there are going to be no grimy details about the particulars, but I wanted to share the lesson that I learned while crying myself stupid between a walk and a nap, and a walk again, and more lucid napping.
At some point during the weekend, my friends and I found ourselves discussing our future prospects, examined our fears and engaged what it is that we think we need to do to be able to truly live our best lives, come the highest of waters or the most hellish of times.
At some point, I shared a story about how I came to know myself as ‘myself.’ I remember some years back looking into the bathroom mirror after leaving the shower, and being stunned at the fact that there was a reflection in the mirror. Of course I had seen myself in the mirror before, yet this time it felt like I was seeing truly for the first time, who it was that I was seeing in the mirror looking back; me.
I realised when I thought about why I was so stunned, when I ‘saw myself’ in the mirror that day and came to a reasonably true and troubling answer that is still changing my reality as I write this. I think I had come to a point where I was ready to truly see myself, just as I am, for the first time. This didn’t mean that this would be the only time that I would be shocked when I saw myself in the mirror, it just meant that this would be the first. I was somewhere along the line, growing a sense of self that no longer had to do with who someone else wanted me to be, or who I thought I was supposed to be, but more about who it is that I have organically grown to become.
I was also very hurt about ‘discovering myself’ on the other side of the mirror because that would mean, at some point, that I ought to take responsibility for who it is that is staring back at me. Those are not things that you can deal with overnight, because sometimes we are not ready for who or what is staring back at us.
The start is to accept that things have happened the way that they have happened. It is enough to know that you could have been or done better, and maybe think about how that could have been, but that is really where the introspection into the past should end. One should give life the time to be enjoyed and as a friend of mine said recently; “We’ve been gifted with life, the one thing that we can do in return to say thank you for all these favours, is to live life beautifully.”
That I suppose can only come once we get over the denialism and living in the past. Things are today, life is today, and so are all the beautiful things that are waiting for you at the end of the magical maze you see staring back at you in the mirror.
I just hope to be alive to see myself flourish and it will be a hell of a relief to see other Namibians and those around these parts, living a beautiful life. Everything else is redundant.
KEITH VRIES

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