Mirror, mirror on the wall

As a budding human being, I used to own a set of cassette tapes and a song book entitled “Most loved children’s songs”. It was gifted to me by my mother with the hopes that she could raise her little girl into a talented and charming lady who can sing. I almost memorized every song as I played the tape nonstop. I belted “Mary had a little lamb” and “The greatest love of all” like a pro. For a while, I honestly thought I was a good singer. Not until my seatmate in second grade had to shut me up while I was in the middle of a singing spree. She deliberately told me that I suck in singing and that she was annoyed that she had to put up with my irksome voice the whole semester. I thought she was just being mean. I went home and told my father about it and was disappointed with his confirmation that yes, I was (and still am) really bad at singing. This made me question myself, “Am I really capable of anything?”

We started in this life with positive ideas of who we are. Our first knowledge about ourselves was based on an internal radar that was programmed by our brain way before it got affected by external factors. Before social standards, culture and familial affairs directed our path, we all have a state of oneness that for me, was the most genuine form of peace that we so often chase as adults. We started seeing the world as labels. These labels then turned into divisions. These divisions became the pioneer for organized living but also became the building blocks for hierarchy and stereotypes.

(photo taken from Anna Akana's instagram account)

I first learned about how I looked way before I even learned how to look at myself in the mirror.  I was told that my hair was a mess and considered less of a hair because it was kinky. And by the standards set by the culture where I was growing up, kinky and straight hair do not belong under one category. They are both keratin growing in our heads but they are not the same. Fair skin and brown skin are also surprisingly, grouped in two different sectors based on the beauty standards that were mostly influenced by Western colonization and plain racism. My parents did their best to shower me with love but I eventually had to say hello to the outside world. So in kindergarten, I learned I was a brown girl with a kinky hair and that there were other kinds of girls with other kinds of hair and we are different. The difference was harmless before it was set as a tool for separation.

From childhood, we were slowly being wired to see things as group A, group B and group “whatever we would like to label things and people”. We begin to see ourselves through a vaguely tinted glass mirror. Things even became harder when we not only hear people telling us of who we are but we also have the media reminding us through every magazine and TV show that we are just “this” and we have to put on some of that matte lipstick and wear that top of the line shirt to turn into a decent mortal.

We are social creatures that thrive with every human encounter. We gain strength and wisdom from every conversation and acknowledgement that we get. Our hearts, however, our also fragile and extremely vulnerable for isolation, insecurity, comparison and self-doubt brought about by these encounters. We will inevitably feel inferior in this world that is built to make us question who we are. That is why it is important to be introspective. There is a reason why solitude and meditation are valued from the beginning of time. It directs us back to that oneness that we once had. It makes us see who we really are beyond the elusive tinted mirrors that were handed to us. Because with peace and love, there are no “this” and “that”. There are no unnecessary labels that will make us question ourselves and no markers set to divide humanity.