Vachon Imagined

Whenever I’m shopping—which is something I generally do not enjoy—I can’t help but notice all the mirrors.

Mirrors in the dressing rooms. Mirrors on the walls. Mirrors in the windows. Cameras overhead. Reflections everywhere.

People looking at themselves. The mirror looking back.

People adorning themselves with shoes, clothes, makeup, thoughts, feelings. We dress the body, but we also dress the mind. We put on identities the same way we put on jackets, hoping one of them will finally feel like us.

Clothes can make us feel beautiful or ugly. And on those ugly days, I have avoided mirrors altogether because a girl can only withstand so much persecution.

But mirrors are everywhere, both literal and figurative.

Social media may be the greatest mirror ever created. It captures a reflection of you—sometimes only a single moment—and suddenly you become an image in someone else’s mind. That image is then passed around, interpreted, judged, defended, attacked, celebrated, condemned.

An entire story is built around a reflection.

The image becomes more important than the life that produced it.

And people miss life.

They miss the living explosion occurring beneath every thought, beneath every label, beneath every photograph. They miss the movement itself and only notice it once it becomes physical, once it has already arrived in form.

Years ago, while working with the FBI, I met a criminal profiler who fascinated me more than anyone else.

Thousands had been trained.

Hundreds had become experts.

But this woman did something different.

She profiled herself.

She wrote an entire paper examining her own mind.

I was captivated.

Not because of her intelligence, although she was brilliant, but because she had turned the lens inward. She had become sophisticated enough to look at herself with the same precision she used on everyone else.

Without condemnation.

Without excuse.

Without hiding.

At the time, it felt miraculous.

Now I see it as one of the greatest lessons of my life.

Because what points out points back.

If I see cruelty, I can find its seed in myself.

If I see arrogance, I can find its root in myself.

If I see beauty, courage, love, selfishness, fear, generosity, hatred, brilliance, or madness, I can find some expression of it within my own consciousness.

Not because I am those things.

Because I am life itself expressing through those possibilities.

The world became a mirror.

Not a tool for judgment, but a tool for discovery.

Every irritation revealed an attachment.

Every admiration revealed a possibility.

Every reaction pointed toward something alive within me.

The little things began vibrating like chemical reactions, each encounter illuminating another hidden corner of consciousness.

And through that process something unexpected happened.

The body became alive.

The world became alive.

The need to constantly defend an image began to soften.

Because once you see that every mirror is reflecting life, not identity, something relaxes.

The reflections lose their authority.

The stories lose their grip.

The images become transparent.

And for brief moments, there is no one left trying to manage the reflection.

There is only life.

Life seeing itself.

Life recognizing itself.

Life beyond judgment.

Life beyond identity.

Life beyond mirrors.