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Ever look at a picture of yourself and wonder, ‘what was I thinking?,’ ‘Why was that look on my face,’ ‘how did I not know I had that extra chin,’ or ‘goodness, I look like that in that outfit?’

I’m hoping more of us out there have felt this way, because I have to believe I am not the only one in the world that wonders about pictures.

Look, I’ve seen pictures of people, and thought that person doesn’t look like that in real life, why is the picture so skewed?

So that’s where I got the title for this post.

A picture is a second in time. It catches and cements a look, a glance, the beginning of a thought forming, the angle can be just in the place to make you look awful, or it can capture a side of yourself you didn’t know existed.

A mirror, on the other hand, is a fluid image. It allows for those angles to be readjusted, the thought to form fully without judgment, it allows us to spot the problem, but then gives us a chance to fix the problem without holding us to that negative for the rest of our lives in some glaring mockup of Instagram collages. 😀

So I was thinkin’,

That’s just like us, isn’t it?

We can see another person (or ourself) as a fixed, stationary image, or as a fluid image that allows for adjusting.

Do we judge someone for the glance? Do we see people in the snapshots or in the bigger image of the entirety of their day/week/year?

When someone gripes at us, do we take into account what their current whole is? Do we remember that they just lost their dad, or they’re running late to pick up their child from school after dealing with demanding clients all day, or that maybe they’ve got a struggle going on that they can’t share with any other soul on earth?

When someone says something rude to us, do we remember that time we said something rude to them, and that maybe they now think we don’t like them?

Do we think of people as if they’re only in this moment with us…a snapshot?

Or do we think of them as having an entire circumstance surrounding that moment, letting angles change and shift and play out, letting movement account for a different viewpoint?

Which image do we hold people to? The snapshot? Or the Mirror?

About the Author:

More by Sherry Chamblee can be found at http://www.sherrychamblee.weebly.com or connect with her on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/authorsherrychamblee or on Twitter https://twitter.com/SherryChamblee Her books can be found on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Sherry-Chamblee/e/B00BA06RJ2/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1