Always The Bridesmaid, Never The Bride

What do you see when you look in the mirror?

Today’s blog prompt from WordPress is about mirrors and how you see yourself in them. To me, mirrors symbolize truth. I can think what I want about myself and how I look, but when I look in the mirror, I’m forced to see things as they really are. The mirror’s cold messages are up to my interpretation; I can see my nose and think “Ooh, I thought it was smaller,” or I can think, “Gee, that’s my favorite part of my face,” but what I see in the mirror is what I get.

One of the greatest struggles in life is reconciling our mirror images with how we see ourselves, both physically and on a more abstract level. We often think of ourselves as filling certain niches, like being “the fun one” or “the smart one,” and we hesitate to change those. Humans like consistency. We don’t like to think of those core elements of ourselves as being malleable. The problem is that what we really are can diverge from our conceptions of ourselves, like two friends parting ways at a fork in the road. Eventually the forks in the road have diverged so far that one friend cannot see the other, as our conception of who we are strays so far from reality that they are no longer reconcilable.

I had a moment today where I called out to that friend walking down the other fork in the road, and she did not answer. She was so far away she could not hear me, and it was at that moment that I realized that my conception of myself no longer matched what was real.

As I spoke with a friend today about prospects for summer jobs, I found myself encouraging the friend to apply for competitive positions in a vicarious manner. I found myself telling them to strive for the best while wishing I myself could achieve close to that level. I realized that I was not the high achiever I had always believed I was. I asked the mirror, mirror on the wall who was the hardest working of them all, and it did not respond in my favor.

I have always believed myself to be supremely driven, the kind of person who settles for nothing less than the best, especially when it comes to academics, and thus career. Today, as my reflection stared me down, I saw that I have allowed myself to believe that success in an intense business environment isn’t for “people like me.” I’ve allowed myself to think that the top jobs and internships are for “someone else,” that person whose parents’ friends are the executives of companies and who has already done five internships by the time they get to college. I’ve allowed myself to stop striving and start settling, believing I’m destined for an eternal game of “always the bridesmaid, never the bride.” I’ve let myself let myself down.

Quite frankly, it’s silly. No one gets anywhere in life by assuming they can’t be the best or somewhere close. We all have disadvantages in life, whether it’s in what we know or who we know or what we have, and allowing those to serve as a mental roadblock isn’t just inaccurate. It’s unacceptable. I’ve allowed myself to be a whiny child who won’t play the game of cards unless she can win. Our past successes and failures do not define us, and I hope to no longer allow mine to define me.

The mirror is unforgiving. It forces us to see ourselves in ways perhaps we’d rather not. But with knowledge comes power, the power to either change our conceptions of ourselves to fit what we see or to change what we see to emulate what we’d like ourselves to be. So don’t be afraid of your reflection, of seeing yourself in a real light. Our reflections, whether physical or metaphorical, can be disheartening when they fail to show us what we wish to see. But they can also give us the inspiration to change for the better. I know mine has.

Other great blog posts under the same blog prompt – enjoy!