Don't Blink....

Mirror therapy for phantom pain has caught our attention lately. The media reports of Dr. Jack Tsao's groundbreaking study hold promise for relieving or mitigating phantom pain in a way that centuries of research and medicine have failed to do. All with a simple mirror. Anything that offers a fresh approach is worth looking into.

Mirrors are a fascinating thing. We see the entire path of our life in mirrors if we take the time to look. Not just that view of the last bit of roadway we’ve traveled, but the whole course of years and miles.

A snippet of a country-western song on the radio still ear-worms an undernote today: Don’t blink….a hundred years goes faster than you think….

We live in such a fast-paced world…not just the highways, the faster and faster airplanes…the faster world on these magical little computer screens we totally take for granted.

Where would we be if abruptly all the computer screens faded to black, shut down, stopped doing their little magic and all we had left were…mirrors?

Would we give ourselves time to like what we see?

Here’s a little life-practice…no excuses, it’s the weekend, you have time.

Look into your mirror for 15 minutes. Set a timer if you need to, time has a way of expanding and compressing totally at odds with how fast we think it’s moving.

What do you see? Scars? Pimples? Sags and wrinkles? Too many frosted cinnamon rolls? Or plastic, botox fillin’ in the living places, stretching taut and pulling away who you used to be? We do tend to zero in on what we think are the flaws, don’t we?

Take 15 minutes. What dreams are still bottled up inside behind those eyes? Have you taken time to see them lately? Or have you been putting yourself on display to yourself so long you’ve forgotten what those dreams are?

Have you been so busy getting through the days you’ve forgotten to take time to reflect on how you’re getting thru?

You may think of a few people who need this a lot more than you do…world leaders, your boss, the guy in the next lane, teevee people…oh, you’re right. I can think of a ton of them, too.

But for these 15 minutes, let’s just take a look at ourselves. Remember when you fell off the playground equipment and got that little nick right above your eye? It’s still there, if you look carefully enough. That’s part of what made you.

Look carefully. Take 15 minutes. Take stock. Be honest. Be nurturing. Because that’s a pretty incredible thing, that face looking back at you from the mirror.

Just don’t blink….