Who Is Running Your Life?
— T.G.L.Iyer
Probably, you are running your own life. Some people have a funny way of surrendering their rights and asking others to run their lives. You don’t have to let other people run your life.
Other people serve as mirrors for us. Our opinion of other people reflects many of our own traits. For example, two people who have seen a movie express contradictory opinions. One says it is good while the other thinks it’s trash.
The one who says that the movie is good sees some common traits between himself and some character portrayed in the movie. The man who says it is trash is unable to be see anything common between himself and any of the characters portrayed there. Human nature causes us to seek the company of people who have the character traits we like about ourselves. It is a sort of self-affirmation. Sometimes, we tell another person, “We are so alike.” Probably, we are looking at the likable parts of the other person. Sometimes you value a trait or an ability that someone else has which you think you don’t have yourself. But the truth is that if you can see and appreciate something in the other person, you have that quality yourself. The purpose of a relationship, perhaps, is to learn more about ourselves by interacting with them like in marriage, friendship and work relationship. At times, it is difficult to see that we have the qualities and talents we admire in other people. It is even more of a challenge to accept that we also possess the traits we don’t like in others. Woody Allen says, “You can only see things in others that exist in yourself. If you judge someone else as rude, perhaps you also have the capacity to be rude.”
Once a person told me that he does not like his mother because she is domineering. I asked him how does it affect him in any way. When he was silent I told him that he does not like the dominating nature of his mother because he himself is domineering and it clashes with that trait. The truth is that our human mirrors always reflect our own reality. The saying is : 'There is hope for all of us when we can look in the mirror and laugh at what we see'.