I recently built a new flowerbed around the mailbox at my
house. We live on a bit of hill, so I
had to remove some dirt. I laid some
stones and then filled in with some fresh garden soil. I also painted our mailbox and the mailbox
post. My wife planted some flowers in the
bed, and it looked pretty good. However, the first picture that my wife took of
our work was taken in such a way that the mailbox looked very crooked. Our mailbox is not perfectly straight, but this
photo made it look like it was leaning way off to one side. When others looked at the flowerbed, there
were comments about the flower bed, but many observed that the mailbox needed
some attention. I said the mailbox was
not as bad as the picture might indicate, but the comments continued with
things like, “pictures don’t lie”.
However, in this case, the picture did lie. I later shared a photo taken from a different
angle to verify this.
I could not help thinking about how
many times in our lives, we are living our lives as best we can, but when people
look from the outside, their perspective is such that they only see what they
perceive are the imperfections. Those perceived
flaws of our lives become the predominant feature that people see in us and the
other work we do, or different perspectives are not considered (and, in fact,
may be ignored when presented). It is
important for us to have people in our lives who can give us accurate reflection
and feedback about who we really are. We
must realize that sometimes other have a perception of us that is skewed by
their perceptions (biases, prejudices, experiences, etc.) At times when we have such people in our
lives, we begin to believe that the altered image of us is truly what we look
like. We must, however, realize that the
image reflected to us is like funhouse mirror image of ourselves. A true friend can show us that our “mailboxes”
are not perfectly straight, but they are not leaning over as much as others
might have us believe. Certainly, we
want to keep working on being the best versions of ourselves, but we want
people who can help us see a realistic version of ourselves while loving us in
our becoming. We need to be able to
resist believing the distorted images of ourselves that others might
offer.
