This can be a challenging season for many. Though it is intended to be a celebration of anticipation, affirmation and arrival, ones focus might happen to remain fixed on regrets, sorrow and loneliness.
A desperately needed gift for some may be well within one’s reach. Something that cannot be left at the front door or scanned into some account. It can be returned, but not as you would expect. And yet, it is celebratory in form. Given through presence.
“It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.”
― John Joseph Powell
It could occur in passing in a store, in a line at the counter. A party with neighbors or coworkers to enjoin in the festivities of the season. A chance meeting of an old friend in a parking lot or local coffee shop. Those that are forlornly seeking a mere glimpse of their inherent beauty and worth, can come to find it in your face, expression and genuine warmth you exude.
A mirror has no sense of itself other than what it sees. And as we are not things, we do have a sense of ourselves in some measure. But being a mirror is not about how you feel. It is about reflecting another’s compassion and truth. Their worth and love. Entities that can somehow become hidden by self created and imposed filters. Shame. Rejection.
Your presence in those instances reveals to them images that cannot hide from reality. Things about themselves they need to witness.
So in anticipte and celebrate their arrival into your life, if but for only a moment. Affirm their true worth and singular beauty as a fellow human. Trumpet the good they will come to know in the time to come.
Reflecting what you truly see in them, brings out the best in you.
And they will then yearn to do the same for another.
A gift that keeps on giving.
...my temporary assignment. 