After A Comprehensive Dialogue

After A Comprehensive Dialogue
I exchanged a couple of words with my image as I stood before a mirror even as I did my best to pay attention to some reverberant summons of a muezzin calling from a masjid nearby.  I was torn between an impulse to respond to the last call and a call from my ego insistent upon conducting an immediate self-analysis. It was quite a tough decision to make: both voices resonated within my being quite loudly for a long time making my indecisive state all the more difficult. 

A lot of unsolved intricate mysteries of my past were reflected in the mirror before me begging for a solution. The syllables I exchanged with my image were an attempt to solve at least some of them even as a large part remained unsolved. The sounds blazing through the loudspeaker in the masjid were another set of syllables signifying a call to solve another mystery. A crisis was created within me by my moment  of indecision.

I wonder if this is the first time I was before such a situation. I am certainly made of a lot of experiences spread all over my life. Many people and many events had changed me and are constantly changing me every single day of my life. Everything contributed to the final person I am today. All of them were reflected in this image I saw in the mirror.

I heard a lot of different voices in my reflection too.  There was a distinct voice of everyone I had met till now. Everyone was pronouncing different syllables signifying different solutions to some mysteries I saw reflected in the mirror before me and even those I heard through the window emanating from the masjid. Several other mysteries begged for a solution, but I couldn’t possibly solve all. I had to choose a few, and my choice is to decide who I am.

At times, it is hard to distinguish between me and my image in the mirror and, at present, it hardly mattered; but somehow, I knew both stood for different persons. The two had parted ways a long time back. The difference was such that they had become entirely different individuals with different personalities.

I soon realised I stood before a different person every day while I stood before a mirror every day. While my image was all about my past and experiences, my real self is about my present. My present self is a dynamic entity constantly in flux while my image reminded me of all mistakes I had made, my real self absorbed all these lessons of life. These mistakes were not to be repeated ever again in any form. My real self found it a bit hard to absorb the very fact that  I had made all these mistakes, but a conflict at the incumbent moment isn’t going to serve any purpose. All said and done, I have yet to learn a lot from my experiences.

All my experiences do count and are really important, but what matters the most now is the part of me that stands before my reflection, It should learn all lessons of life from its master. My present self and all that I do today shall assume importance only if I learn all lessons of life my past wants to give.

While half of me wanted to respond to the call from the masjid, the other half wanted to be with my image for a longer time. I remained in this position, looking at my image in a mirror, for a long time. Someone might say I had fallen in love with it.

At the end of the day, a complete set of sentences were exchanged between the two entities for a long time. I made sure my dialogue with my image was a comprehensive one, a healthy debate took place, but I walked over to the masjid a while later.