Being mirrors for each other

Some brief reflections on the basis of our social life

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I first became aware of just how strongly other people shape who I am, when I went to visit an ex-girlfriend a number of years ago. We sat and talked amiably in her living room, but I had a weird sensation the whole time — why is she treating me like some sort of profound philosopher-poet? And why am I acting like one?

The obvious reason was that I had been something of a melancholic philosopher-type during the years we dated, so that’s how she knew me. But now it was 10 years later and I had been a lot of things, in a lot of situations, to a lot of people, and I wasn’t used to being so strongly that one character. I hadn’t played that role with such heartfelt solemnity for a while.

That experience made me aware of how so much of who I am is dependent on other people. Anyone who’s at least 5 or 10 years out of high school will probably know a basic version of this: When you run into someone who was younger than you at school, it can be easy to fall into the mold of being the mature, older kid; and when you see someone who was a few grades above you at school, one can still feel a little sheepish and awed. But the weird thing is: it can be hard to shake this dynamic decades later. I saw a Beatles documentary where George Harrison described how, as kids, Paul McCartney was 6 months older than him, and how Paul would always lord that fact over him and act like the cool older kid. And now, George said, it was fifty years later and not much had changed: Paul was still 6 months older.

But of course it’s not just age-differences that affect the roles we play in life, everything does. We are constant shape-shifters. I have a friend with an amazing laugh — it’s like a dam bursting, it just pours right out of them. Around that person I’m a constant clown. And I have another friend who’s almost always outgoing and loud. Around them I become a quiet introvert. The list goes on and on.

So now when I look back on my life, I can start to see how all these different parts of me have been drawn out by other people, how they’ve been born in the space between myself and others.

Vigeland Sculpture Park in Oslo, Norway

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Of course, it’s not that we’re nothing in ourselves and only become something through our relationships with others. Instead, it seems like it’s all there as potential, but can only grow in a suitable environment. Other people are often the sunshine and soil needed for what lives in us to sprout.

Many people can recall a teacher who inspired them to strive for something more, or a mentor who awakened the feeling of reverence in them. There is often a kind of intimacy to such experiences — a seeing and being seen.

For instance, I had a teacher in high school who was genuinely interested in the world — he was just alive and awake to what was going on — and I respected him for it. And when we’d speak for a moment after class, it was clear he was also interested in who I was, in my development. And that was startling in a way, because he didn’t need to be. And that one act of freely-given interest had a huge impact on how I experienced my own self-worth. All of a sudden I had the feeling, “Maybe there’s something in me worth being interested in.” His interest woke up my own interest.

So this act of being seen by another person can be hugely significant. It can be a kind of mirror that reflects something back to us that we weren’t aware of. It can wake us up to something that would otherwise lie dormant.

But it can also be a double-edged sword because we don’t only draw out the good in each other. At times we can actually hamper the good from emerging, or even stimulate the forming of weaknesses.

Many will know the experience of being in a relationship that started off so incredible — so full of the feeling of seeing and being seen for what’s best in one another — but then, at a certain point, turned. Maybe it only became disinterest, or maybe it turned even more sour, becoming active dislike or hate, where the person you’re most intimate with now only sees the worst in you. And then the feeling can arise, “I don’t like who I am around you anymore, I don’t like the person I am in your eyes.”

The film Minari that came out last year did an amazing job depicting this. The movie is a powerful meditation on family and relationship, and there is an absolutely crushing moment where one person says to another, “I’ve lost faith in you,” which is to say, ‘I no longer see you as the person I once saw. I no longer see the highest in you.’

The family depicted in Minari (2020)

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Relationships are hard, and I suspect a large part of the difficulty is that we don’t actually look closely enough at the other person from the start, but get swept up in our own flights of fancy and in the incredible feeling that they love us. In a way, it’s simply astounding to be loved by someone, to be chosen by them — to choose each other — to be theirs and have them be yours. But then, when that thrill eventually cools off, we can find ourselves with someone who is in many ways a stranger and an all-too-human one at that. And that falling from grace can be awful.

Friendships can also be incredibly intimate, but they often don’t start off with the same fireworks that accompany falling in love. There’s rarely the same imaginative swooning, the spinning of fantasy, that can so disappoint us later. And there’s rarely the feeling of exclusivity, even ownership, that can characterize romantic relationships.

Instead, friendships often strike a balance between intimacy and openness — there’s a commitment to one another but there’s still also freedom. And I don’t just mean the freedom of a longer leash, of being able to live your own life and find each other when you feel called to. I mean an openness in how we see each other.

In the eyes of my closest friends, I’m not just one thing. Yes, they are a mirror (and usually for the better parts of my being), but they are also whole rooms where I can continue to move and explore and find myself. They create and hold a space for my own becoming. There’s room for my soul to breathe.

Of course romantic relationships can have this too, but in a way it feels like it’s the element of friendship within relationship — to be lovers, but also be friends. And it can be hard to foster, because the living together is so close — you bump up against, and bruise each other so often. Such close collaboration can shrink the space between people until it feels like a prison, until it feels like there’s no space left.

So it becomes all the more important that we actively create the space in ourselves for the other’s becoming; it doesn’t just happen. I think this is what the poet Rilke meant when he said “I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.” Can we create a space in ourselves where the other can be free, even from our own prying eyes? Can we cultivate patience and loyalty towards each other?

Because we’re responsible for how we hold another person and what we see in them, for the seeds we choose to nurture. Of course, every adult is ultimately responsible for themselves — for what grows in their own plot of land — but we also have a hand in their unfolding. In a sense, we are co-gardeners for everyone we meet.

So can we see the highest in another even when they no longer see it themselves? This was described by the 20th century philosopher Rudolf Steiner, in what has often been called the Faithfulness verse, but could equally be called the Faithfulness practice:

Let your loyalty to another human being come about in this way:

There will be moments — quickly passing by — when they will seem to you filled and illumined by the true, primal image of their spirit.

Then can come — yes, will come — long stretches of time when your fellow-being seems clouded, even darkened. But learn at these times to say to yourself: The spirit will strengthen me; I will remember the true, unchanging image that I once saw. Nothing at all, neither deception nor disguise, can take it away from me.

Struggle again and again for the true picture that you saw. The struggle itself is your faithfulness.

And in those efforts to be faithful and to trust, a human being will come close to another as if with an angel’s power of protection.

Steiner isn’t just describing the pain and disappointment — the long stretches of darkness — that can be found in romantic relationships; he’s talking about the darkness that can come into all relationships. How quickly we can turn our back on another person — even our friends and family — when all of a sudden we see them in a different light, or when we find them on a different side of an issue. In those moments we can see how little loyalty, how little faith, we actually have in each other.

But Steiner is also saying that that’s to be expected. We can’t just live in the first bloom of our love for one another. We have to go through darkness.

I find that helpful to hear, especially at this time of year. There’s a kind of realism to it. He seems to say, Winter is coming; prepare yourself. Don’t think your relationships will be a perpetual spring and summer or you’ll be shocked when the seasons change. Look more closely at those you love; pay attention to that which is highest in them so you can carry that flame into the cold with you. And then, perhaps, in time, you will find a new warmth growing between you.