The Mirror of Others

(Please excuse the picture quality...) So which is me, and which is the 'mirror'? 

There was once a study that concluded that people prefer the way they look in a reversed image better than a normal (non-reversed) image... the theory is that we see ourselves in the mirror so often that a reversed image is 'normal' for ourselves. This is true for me in these images. Even though I know which is normal and which is reversed, and I know they are the SAME picture, I prefer the reversed image of myself! Strange!

Makes me think about how we 'see' ourselves as people.

The past few years, someone close to me has seemed to view me in a very negative fashion. Although I know their view is completely skewed, I still stop and question myself quite often, especially these last few months- and it is NOT a good thing at all!

Then I remembered an experience I had a few months back. I was attending a writing conference as part of my school assignments (I know, right?! What a great school to 'require' me to attend a writer's conference! But, I digress.) I happened to sit by a former high school classmate who was also attending the conference. I remember this classmate as being a nice young man but that was about all I remembered...

 He told me that he wanted to thank me! He went on to say that he had just been talking to an acquaintance about me the week before, about what a wonderful example of honesty I am... (wow! and what?) He told me that back in high school, when I overheard him talking about his intentions to cheat on a test, I had told him that he was better than that! I had told him not to cheat. (yeah, I would say that.)

What amazed me was that he had not only remembered that conversation, but he had then continued to 'reflect' such a positive 'picture' of me as a person to the world so MANY years later!

It makes me a little more aware of how I wish others to reflect me. More importantly, though, how do I reflect others? Do I pick out the good qualities and reflect those by how I treat them and how I talk about them to others? Or do I merely reflect the negative?

And how do I want my children and grandchildren to be viewed in the mirror of others, especially my own?