[ES019] Essay 'What I Wished For, What I Was Given' -Others and Mirror Images- (vol.19)

It has been a while since I posted this essay series, so let's
reconfirm the theme☺️

'What I Wished For, What I Was Given'

Theme Concept
While at first glance it may seem like saying 'what I wished for was not given,' in reality, 'what I truly needed was given.'

When you can honestly accept the polar reality of 'the gap between human wishes and what life provides,' beyond that deep insight, a door to new values awaits.
—Ah, I remember now.🤭

The detailed theme concept ishere💁

'What I Wished For, What I Was Given' -Others and Mirror Images-

The gaze that looks at you might be a reflection of yourself.

The moment you become strongly aware of someone's gaze, you may suddenly lose sight of who you are. Your face, expressions, and gestures, which you should be used to seeing in the mirror, start to feel like they belong to someone else. Conversely, a casual remark from someone else can suddenly reveal feelings you had hidden deep within yourself. I think everyone has had such an experience at least once.

In other words—

How someone sees you, within that 'gaze', you might be seeing yourself reflected.
For example, if someone directs a kind gaze at you, it might be because you yourself are radiating kindness.

Conversely, when you feel you have been directed a stern gaze, it may not just be that person's emotion, but a reflection of the anxiety or self-evaluation within you.

To put it more daily...

'Sometimes you know yourself through the eyes of others.'
'People's reactions might be a projection of your own inner self.'
'Sometimes your own figure is reflected in the depths of the gaze you feel is watching you.'

It might be something like that.

If I were to summarize it in a BLUE-like way...🤔💭

'The gaze of others👀' through the mirror 🪞,
what I was looking at was actually 'BLUE'.

Saying 'within that 'gaze', you might be seeing yourself reflected' can be seen as BLUE being reflected in the other person's eyes, or it could mean possessing the other person and having BLUE look down on BLUE itself through their eyes.

In other words, introspecting on oneself by changing perspectives, I suppose?🤔💭

🔁'The self reflected in the other's eyes'
This is a sense of 'reflection' in both a physical and metaphorical sense.
Like a mirror, your existence is projected onto the other person's gaze, and you wonder what part of you is influencing the emotions and impressions they direct at you.
—A feeling of quietly asking yourself.

🧘'Possessing the other and looking down on oneself'
This is a shift in perspective, or perhaps the pinnacle of empathy.
You place your existence 'inside another' (position change). Then, you look at your own figure through that person's emotional filter.

By "placing the 'gaze' that observes oneself outside of oneself" (externalization),one gains the ability to view oneself objectively.

This is a philosophy that also leads to"the blurring of the boundary between self and other"and"the power of harmony with the heterogeneous."It is a philosophy that also leads to

If I refine the words a little, perhaps I could express it like this...✍️

It is not me who is simply reflected in that gaze looking at you.
I enter deep into that gaze, possessing your inner self—and through your eyes, another version of me was watching me.

Delicate, yet never one-sided."A worldview that stands at the intersection of self and other."

Engaging with others is also a way of knowing oneself.

It is often thought that this happens because a "self-axis" has been established, but in reality, it might be the exact opposite. I believe a self-axis is not something complete and solid, but rathera "self-axis"that issomething that emerges within the relationship with the other,a collection of feelings that are fluid and change shape the moment they are touched.🤔💭

If a heterogeneous world existed and a single life form stood there, would that life form be able to understand loneliness or death? No, would it even have an ego in the first place?🤔💭

Without an opponent to face or a society to belong to, there is no necessity to establish oneself.
And if an ego has not sprouted, one will not face oneself and reflect internally.

In other words, unless thelaw of action and reactionof physics also works in the world of thought, that life form will not developsubjective interiority.🐣That is what it means to
emerge within the relationship with the other.✍️For a long time, BLUE felt uncomfortable with the terms "being yourself" or "self-axis."Something didn't feel right. They sound good, but the moment I put them into words, I felt like I could hear a voice from somewhere saying that was wrong.

For example, "freedom," "sense of unity," "peace of mind," "sense of contribution"—.
These are certainly important keywords for BLUE.

However, if I present them as "that is my self-axis," something falls away.
It is the feeling that by putting it into words, the delicate nuances are stripped away, information is lost, and it is perceived as something different.🤔💭
It stems from the fact that putting things into words physically causes a loss of information.
Surely, for


"me,"a self-axis is something that can only be grasped through "feeling."☺️

Therefore, when I try to verbalize a self-axis composed of feelings, it wavers.

Just as deep-sea fish get decompression sickness if pulled to the surface too quickly, trying to rush to verbalize the"homogeneous"deep sea within me, filled with"feelings,"and pull them up into the"heterogeneous"world of the outside, has the potential tocreate a transformationin the very nature of the feelings themselves.

To bring feelings up to the conscious mind as raw data without forcing them into words, I shape images as my bodily sensations feel them.

During a period when I had long forgotten the self-acceptance of a self-axis, this is what I salvaged from the depths of my emotions and visualized.✍️

A friend's words

One day, a close friend said this to me:
"BLUE, sometimes you look at yourself from a very high perspective."

It sounded like a compliment, but it was also a remark that felt like it created some distance.
As I ruminated on those words, I thought about why I was seen that way.
Then, I realized that I unconsciously"inhabit the perspective of others"within myself.

For example, when a silence occurs, I can't help but imagine, "How does the other person feel about this pause?"
Even when I say something, the consciousness of "What will the other person think when they hear this?" comes first.

And when that goes too far, the act of speaking itself becomes scary. The dilemma of not being able to translate feelings well even when they well up. When I am in front of someone, my words get stuck, and I fall silent like a clam.😅

I just want to talk. I'm not even looking for the right answer. Why is such a simple thing so difficult?

Possessing the other, and viewing myself from above

But then, I suddenly thought. Perhaps this conflict is actually the image of myself reflected in the mirror of "the other."

In the gaze of others, the quietness of my voice, the ambiguity of my expressions, and the frustration of not being able to convey things are revealed. I feel as if the impatience and irritation toward that imperfection are directed at myself.

However, there is a"GAP"there.

"The self I thought I was" and "the self reflected in the other's gaze."

When a gap arises there, just as we encounter coincidences or inevitabilities in life, don't we encounter the self as"something that was given"?Don't reject that gap, but rather try to find it interesting.

Then, perhaps a self you never imagined might stand up there.

That is, 'What I Wished For, What Was Given'

Afterword✍️

What it means to be yourself
Once, wanting to define my "self," I tried lining up many words. I listed keywords that represented me in a notebook and tried to combine them to create sentences.

But it was unnatural somehow.
Because words can only convey 7%—without even bringing up Mehrabian's rule, there was no "heat" of feeling there.

In truth, the fragments of my self-axis were in the sudden silences when talking to someone, the moments of unexpected empathy, or the margins of words that I just couldn't convey.

And I realize that those fragments always existed through "the space between others" and "the reaction with others."

Self-axis and feeling
The current BLUE doesn't really think about defining a self-axis in words.
I just try to feel the sensation of "Oh, this is it!" in my daily life.☺️

It might be the time at dusk spent with someone, casual conversation while drinking coffee, or the silence of sharing unspoken thoughts.

Each one of those things gradually outlines and shapes the existence that is me.

And in that process, I am quietly facing the self reflected in the mirror of the other.

That gaze looking at you might be a reflection of yourself.

However, that is not necessarily the same thing.
That is precisely why, through that “GAP”, we can discover contours of ourselves we never even knew existed.
Others are grateful mirror images that help us discover our own existence.
If only we could look back at them properly, without fearing their gaze, even if we feel a little shy at times.

BLUE's 'what I wished for' might have been, perhaps, that “self nurtured within relationships with others.” And that, in fact, was also

“what I was given.” [End]