I left a video message on Skype the other day. I was trying
to Skype my husband, who was away on business, but he didn’t answer, and Skype
very kindly asked if I wanted to leave a video message.
Sure enough, when I clicked on it, a window popped up, and suddenly
I was face to face with myself, my webcam tracking my every movement. I clicked
Record and did it in one take.
When I clicked Stop, however, Skype gave me the option to
send the video, re-record, or cancel. That’s when it got interesting. At that
moment, Skype flipped the image of my video so that now instead of looking at a
mirror image – which Skype provides when you see yourself on the webcam – I was
now seeing the properly “flipped” image of myself that everyone else sees. This
image was familiar in the way images of myself in photographs are familiar, but
also strange and unsettling because I’m not
used to seeing that person. I can honestly say I don’t know her well.
This got me thinking about an evening a week or so ago when
I went to an open mic. Lately I’ve been working up new arrangements of my
original music and playing them out at open mics. I am a classically trained
cellist, but I only picked up the guitar a few years ago, so playing guitar
while I sing, especially when I’m nervous, is still a challenge. Long story
short, I did not play as well as I had hoped that particular night and was pretty upset about it.
But the truth is, my playing that evening was probably fine. I
am not the next American Idol (though someone once paid me a confusing compliment
that if American Idol had been on 20 years earlier I’d have been a shoo-in),
but I didn’t stink up the joint either. I was actually “very good,” as another
performer accurately noted, but that evening, this was not enough for me. I was
in full-on piss-all-over-myself mode, furious at my lack of professionalism,
steel nerves, and general perfection. I even went so far as to inform my steering wheel on the way home that I was tired of SUCKING.
But the truth is, I didn’t suck.
Which brings me to my point. The view from here – inside my
head, heart and body looking out – is very different from the one perceiving me
as everyone but me perceives me. I literally can’t see myself directly in the
same way others see me directly.
Think about that for a second: we all go through our entire
lives never having physically seen our own faces without some form of mediation
like a mirror or a photographic device. Isn’t that enough to convince a person
that perhaps our own judgments of ourselves from within are … well … limited at
best?
Hang onto that thought for a moment, then consider my judging
myself by my mirror image. This person who shows up in the mirror every day –
and on Skype only during the recording process – is a stranger to everyone but
me. I am the only one who sees her regularly, yet she is often the one on whom
I base my judgments about myself, my worth, my abilities, and my talents, not
to mention my looks.
As I considered these things, I realized how truly logically
perverse it is to judge myself only from either the limited vantage point
I have from inside my head, or from my mirror image. No one else sees or knows those
two points of view, because they don’t correspond to anyone’s direct perception of me. The view from
inside my head may be direct and real for me, but it’s limited. My mirror
image, on the other hand, is neither direct nor real for anyone, because it’s not how I directly perceive myself, nor how
anyone else directly perceives me.
Now I am not necessarily suggesting that others can see me
better than I can see myself, but I’m willing more and more to entertain the
thought. At minimum, I have grown more and more suspicious of my judgments
about myself, particularly the harsh ones, as they come from a very limited
perspective – the inside of my head, or from the indirect, inverted image I see
in the mirror.
So it is with my music. I record my practice sessions
regularly, and even though I shudder every time I set up the microphone, I am
constantly stunned by how NOT CRAPPY I sound on playback. Again, I’m no
American Idol, but I’m also never as horrendous as I perceive my talents to be
at the moment I exercise them.
And so it is with life. I’m never as bad as I think I am. I
don’t see me like everyone else sees me, because it is literally physically impossible
to see myself as directly as they do.
This of course raises the deeper question of why I bother
with any of this – why the obsession with judging myself? I think it’s natural to
want to know how I’m doing, but on what criteria do I accept these judgments?
Looking only to myself is suspect. Looking to others is also suspect, as their
perspective on me is colored by their own wishes, desires, and suspicions.
I know the answer: I need to seek my value in the eyes of my
higher power, but I still don’t know how to do that. Or rather, I still have
not weaned myself from reliance on the opinions of mortals. It’s not that those
opinions aren’t valuable; sometimes they are. It’s that they don’t satisfy,
because no matter how sincerely anyone tells me they like my music, for
example, I don’t really believe them, because I wonder if they're just trying to be nice.
Perhaps it is the discouraging words I have received from
others that cause words of encouragement to bounce off. But that also suggests
that I really should be relying on something else – or someone else, like a higher power – for a true understanding of my self
worth rather than deferring to these nasty remnants of opinion that have taken
up residence in my heart.
