Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

I was always one of the many people who’ve made New Year’s resolutions. Year after year, I would take a moment to think about what resolutions will mean for the new year. And year after year, I would also worry about not being able to fulfill these resolutions. But this year, I want to forget about making resolutions.

Every year brings new things to worry about and think about. I think the beauty of it all is that we learn and grow from these challenges that we face. But with New Year’s resolutions, we hold so many expectations for the new things that are to happen in our lives. These expectations dwindle upon us and how we feel about our present situation. We end up comparing ourselves to others who we think might have it better off and feel bad about where we are at on our timeline.

The mirror is something that we all look to when we feel like we need to “see” ourselves. We look to the mirror for advice on our current state and we hope that the mirror will give us reassurance and comfort. The mirror acts as our place of solace and guidance, making us feel as if they are there to listen and not judge.

As the new year comes, we take the mirror with us. We look at ourselves, making sure we are following our new year’s resolutions and not messing up. We look at the mirror to make sure we “don’t mess up.” Although the mirror is there to let us see ourselves, it also reveals to us our inner flaws that we can’t always control.

And the truth is, we ARE allowed to “mess up” and not follow through with the resolutions we make. We are human after all and we can’t always meet our expectations, especially high ones for the New Year.

But the mirror can’t always prevent our flaws that we want to get rid of for the new year. It can only remind us of the flaws that we see when we look at ourselves. We have to work on the flaws that we want to get rid of ourselves. People often say, “self reflection is scary, but necessary for growth.” And this holds true to how we feel about ourselves when we see who we are in front of us, before our eyes. We become afraid of the flaws that we need to fix.

Making new year’s resolutions become a subsidiary to seeing ourselves in the mirror. We want to see growth and change, but sometimes the mirror doesn’t always show that. Making new year’s resolutions provides us with a scary time where we actually realize that we are still right where we started. Both show how we want to change, but life won’t allow us to right away.

So, the next time we're at a friend’s New Year’s party, we will find ourselves contemplating whether or not to make new year’s resolutions. Maybe we will think twice about making resolutions that will just set unrealistic expectations for us, that we know we won’t be able to achieve right away this year.