Relative Something

It came to my attention recently, by way of a public radio program, that the image of my face that I look at in my mirror everyday, is not the version of me that everyone else sees. I heard a rebroadcast of the program, RadioLab, specifically, a story about symmetry, which included a segment called, “Mirror, Mirror.”

It isn’t really a surprise, …at least, it shouldn’t be, yet, it seemed really profound to me at the time. After having let the idea simmer in my mind for over a week, it continues to spark a feeling of significance. I’ve yet to gain any clarity as to what that significance might be for me, so I believe writing about it might be a worthy exploration. Maybe the significance is not for me, but for someone who is reading here.

I am well aware that a mirror reverses images. We all know that text in a mirror will appear backwards. I’m guessing people will recognize the phenomena of giving directions, say, when carrying a couch, and needing to specify, “my left.” The reversal of image does appear to be an obvious fact, but it is one that is easy to lose sight of with the occurrence of daily viewing our own face.

If you click on the link above to the RadioLab site for, “Mirror, Mirror,” you can find a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, with the ability to click to then see his mirror image. It is an interesting exercise to see the view he would have looked upon in the mirror, as compared to the man the rest of the world saw.

I decided to look at two opposite images of myself, side by side, and see if I could recognize a difference. It won’t mean much to people who don’t know me, I suspect, but I’d be interested if those of you who do know me, recognize one of these images as being the view of me you see in real life, face to face encounters.

It seems to me that I would have noticed that the face I see in photographs of me would look different than how I see myself in the mirror, but I don’t have any recollection of ever having had that thought. (Of course, I don’t have an obvious left or right hair-part that would make the visual difference more dramatic, which, by the way, is the point that is featured in the RadioLab episode.) I do know some people who complain that they never like how they look in photographs, and a few who flat out refuse to have their pictures taken.

Maybe that is akin to the phenomenon of not liking the sound of our own recorded voice, because it doesn’t sound like us. Since we usually only hear ourselves with the internal resonances of our own heads, our recorded voices sound foreign.

It could be that our being accustomed to the view of our faces in a mirror, is why images of us in photographs can look foreign to some people.

Interesting topic of perspectives, don’t you think? If nothing else, it is a darn good topic for a blog called Relative Something! I still don’t sense what it is that I might want to take from this new insight of perspectives, but it has me freshly aware that the guy I see in my mirror is, indeed, opposite from the one everyone else sees.

Now you have an excuse to spend a few extra minutes in front of a mirror, next chance you get, pondering what it is you are actually seeing!

For reference, if you are interested, it is possible to get a mirror that double-reverses the reflection, so you can see yourself as the rest of the world sees you. Check out the True Mirror (featured in the RadioLab program) for one such version.