23/05/2022
Be yourself go back ! Let me tell you .. It’s a luncheon with friends and family on a November afternoon. Everyone is sitting around an oval table. From the kitchen, the hostess always comes through with more delicious dishes. At a moment of celebration, Elliot, one of the presents, stands up and goes to a full-body mirror on an opposite wall. He leans over his reflection and kisses the image itself. Return to the table and, shortly after, repeat the same action: approaches the mirror and kisses it on your reflected self. Elliot repeats the gesture many times without even realizing it’s being watched by other people. But for that 1-and-a-half-year-old boy, the audience wouldn't make much of a difference: he seems to be engulfed in the joy of being himself. Perhaps you, like I did, found Elliot's attitude strange before you found out it was a child. I sounded like an oddly narcissistic person or, who knows, drank more glasses of wine than I should have. But the message behind this simple, childish scene tells me something tender about the freedom to be who we are—no matter who’s watching. And it makes me think about how so many judgments (ours and others) that we carry throughout life are making the image of our essence reflected in mirrors so distorted. Gradually, love will be replaced by a feeling of separation, of inadequacy, of fear of not liking. But that beauty of being who we are is still in us, even if hidden. “We can see it again the moment we stop judging ourselves, but that criticism is now a habit we identify with. We convince ourselves that judging is seeing, but it’s actually the opposite. You only see the truth when you stop judging. " So come back as many times as necessary. re-identify as Elliot. Sincerely, Adriana Melo