Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

The writing prompt for this piece was Faces. Some of you might recognise a few.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

There I was at a yard sale, when I saw what looked like a new mirror that I could use for my bathroom wall. Since no price was listed, I asked the seller how much he wanted for the mirror. He was a bent-over, aged gentleman, with a long beard, gray hair, and mysterious piercing eyes. I was surprised when he asked me what my profession was.

“Why would you want to know that?” I asked.

His reply shocked me. “This is a special mirror with certain properties that I will only give to the right type of person. No politicians, lawyers, billionaires, or disingenuous people will get this mirror.

Now I was even more curious. I explained to the old man that I was a retired teacher and a storyteller.

He looked deep into my eyes and said, “Perfect. You are just what this mirror is looking for. The mirror is yours. Think of it as a sort of Snow White gift. However, I suggest that you think wisely when you use it, and don’t be like Snow White’s mother.

So that’s how I got the mirror for free. Crazy, huh!. 

———

After installing it on my bathroom wall, I stood and looked at my reflection.

I decided to pretend to be Snow White’s mother, remembering that the old man said to think wisely. I said, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the wisest of them all?”

Suddenly, the reflection of my face changed. 

It was my baby-self.

“Why, I’m the wisest of them all,” my reflection said. I don’t have to do anything but eat and poop; all my needs are taken care of by everyone else catering and playing with me. You can’t get wiser than that. Life is so easy.”

I wanted to reply, when, all of a sudden, my reflection changed.

It was me as a 3-year-old

He said, “Nah, don’t listen to him. I’m the wise one. I can even feed myself, and boy, do I know how to control things in this house. Between sad eyes and crying, they all come running to give me what I want. Now, that’s what I call smarts.”

Again, I was going to respond when the reflection changed for a third time.

It was my 9-year-old self

“If you want to be wise, you need to have aspirations and be able to set your own future. Sports are the way to go. I’m going to be a professional baseball player. Just watch me play.

I was going to point out to myself that my Little League batting average would end up .000, and even when I turned twelve, and the team I was on that won the pennant, the coach wouldn’t even let me in the game to play. 

That’s when there was another face change.

It was my 30-year-old self, playing a guitar with a marching kazoo in my mouth.

He stopped playing and said, “You, of course, realized that sports were not going to get you anywhere. What you need to be wise is to find a talent that will last a lifetime. Now music is the way to go, especially if you can play strange instruments that people generally don’t use. When I returned from England with this marching kazoo, I was a big hit here in the States. Now that’s using your smarts.

I didn’t want to disappoint myself by sharing how little I used that talent when, you guessed it, there was another face.

This was me only 5 years ago.

“You need to demonstrate powers, to show you are wise,” he said. “Just look at me standing a raw egg on its end, and it is in December, not during an Equinox. That’s what you call disproving myths, through demonstration and science. Now that is wisdom,” 

That was more luck than anything else, I thought. Christina considered it a waste of time. Wise people don’t waste time standing raw eggs. And then, well, you know the routine.

Here I am reading a book in a hammock.

“You want to be wise, read books, and relax. Wisdom comes from knowledge, and knowledge comes from books. That is why I’m chilling out here, reading an informative fantasy novel.”

I realized how stupid that was, and I was getting tired of all the bad advice from my past selves. I just asked the mirror, “Can we skip to the last reflection, please? And that’s when he showed up.

To my surprise, it was my future self.

“Now you’re finally getting wise,” he said. “So tell me what wisdom is?”

I looked at my future self and responded, “It certainly isn’t power, control, athleticism, talent, misguided expertise, and self-aggrandizement. It is to continue to seek knowledge. It is helping others and sharing. It is to model the behavior that others should strive for, and use whatever tools one has to make this a better world to live in. It is to accept that you do not know it all and hear, not just listen, to others’ ideas. It is to care and to love.

My future self smiled at me and then asked, “So now answer your original question, who is the wisest of them all?”

By this point, I was pretty sure of the answer. “No one,” I said. “No one person can hold all the wisdom in the world. When set right, and we work together, we are all collectively the wisest person in the world.

It was at this point that the mirror returned to its mirror-like state, only this time it was not reflecting anything. There was a message that scrolled along at the bottom of it, which read:

You have reached your allotment of supported requests. No more questions will be answered. Storyteller – Please dispose of this mirror as you see fit. You know what to do.