Good afternoon ladies and gentleman,
Today i approach a rather peculiar topic, something i found in a book written by the American psychiatrist Rollo May in the 1940’s- the mirror person.
His book “Man’s Search for Himself” considers the concept of individual and societal anxiety, how the idea of individual emptiness and lack of emotional well being has developed and modified society since the 17th century. Even though these ideas were developed in the 1940’s- i would still wager it has some relevance to today’s society.
As i mentioned previously, we are all in a rush, supposedly lacking the time or energy to be able to invest in something physically or emotionally, leaving us only with what people think as any real gauge of people or situations. May developed the idea of the “mirror person” based on this, in my opinion. This emptiness due to this rush is something we all have, either something we experience all the time, or for only five minutes a week is the issue that developed the mirror person.
The idea May came up with is the fact that we are so obsessed by what people think, to the point we lose any real understanding of who we are. In modern society this is something that engulfs a lot of what we think about, so we lose our sense of individuality, and purely become the person people’s opinions make us out to be, we “mirror” their opinions, hence becoming a “mirror person.”
We work so hard to fit in and be liked we lose that unique edge to people’s opinion, just so we can fit in with a group of people we may not necessarily even like, as if we fear being alone so much its we purposefully ignore who we really are. What’s worse is it appear’s we do this without thinking about it, not sure why or how we act in this way, but find ourselves talking, walking, dressing, or even spending vast amounts of money on cars and houses we don”t really need and not really want, in some belief this will make us “fit in,” allowing us to have a better life.
Even if we don’t know it, we are all mirror people.
What do you think? Why are we all so interested in people’s opinion?
Until next time DR
Random motivation picture.
