The Day the Mirror Was Late

Introduction

It was a regular Tuesday morning, the kind where nothing really happens until you’ve had your first cup of coffee. I shuffled into the bathroom, still half asleep, and flicked on the light. Everything was where it was supposed to be—towel on the hook, toothpaste cap forgotten as usual, and my trusty old mirror hanging there, waiting to deliver its daily verdict.

Except today, it didn’t.

I stood there, blinking a couple of times, waiting for my reflection to catch up. Nothing. No face staring back at me, no reassuring nod from my sleep-deprived self. Just...blank glass. It was like the mirror had decided to take a break.

I leaned in a bit, waved my hand in front of it, checked the back for any signs of tampering—nothing. Maybe I’d overslept and crossed into some alternate reality where mirrors don’t work. Or maybe, just maybe, my mirror was running late.

I could feel the absurdity of the thought creeping in. “Come on, you’re going to be late. Show up already.” No response. The mirror remained stubbornly silent, offering no reflection of the sarcastic grin I was sure I had on my face.

The Self-Reflection Dance

After a minute of this standoff, I tried another approach. Maybe it was the lighting. I flicked the bathroom switch a few times, bathing the room in flashes of light and shadow. Still nothing. Maybe I needed to go more high-tech. I pulled out my phone, opened the camera, and there it was—my reflection, alive and well. “Good to know I still exist,” I muttered, tapping my phone screen as if to prove something.

At this point, I was halfway between laughing at myself and wondering if this was some kind of cosmic joke. But what was it they said about vampires? No reflection, no soul? Surely not... But still, the longer I stood there, the more my mind began to wander. What if the mirror was trying to tell me something?

The Realization

Suddenly, the absence of my reflection felt less like an inconvenience and more like... an opportunity. Without the mirror, there was no face to check, no hair to fix, no judgment staring back at me. I was free from the routine, the daily inspection I didn’t even realize I relied on so much.

And there it was—the question I’d been avoiding. Who am I when there’s no mirror to tell me?

Every day, I’d stand here and let the mirror reflect who I was, or at least who I thought I was. Messy hair, dark circles, maybe a decent jawline on a good day. But today, with the mirror gone silent, I started thinking about how much I depend on that reflection. How much we all do. Mirrors, in one form or another, are everywhere. People’s opinions, the way the world sees you, the things you think you’re supposed to be. What happens when all those mirrors stop working?

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Without the reflection, there was no criticism, no standard to measure up to. I was still standing here, just as real, just as present. Maybe even more so.

The Return

Just as I was getting comfortable with this revelation, the mirror blinked back to life. There I was, staring at myself like nothing unusual had happened. I half-expected my reflection to shrug, as if to say, “What? I was just taking a break.” I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Thanks for showing up. But I think I’m good now.”

I took one last look and turned away. Perhaps the mirror had needed a break so that I could stop relying on it to tell me who I was. And for the first time in a while, I wasn’t so worried about what it showed me.

-- Pradeep K (Prady)

The Paradox of Creating Your Own Reality

Ever feel like you're steering a shopping cart with a mind of its own, wobbling down the supermarket aisle? One wheel spins freely, while the others seem dead set on dragging you into the potato chips. This, dear readers, is what “creating your own reality” can feel like. Sure, we try to steer our cart toward the organic produce, but no amount of positive thinking will keep it from veering occasionally into the snack section.

Now, the idea of shaping reality with your mind has become a cliche, and it's tempting to imagine that thinking hard enough about rainbows could halt a hailstorm. But let’s be honest: life doesn’t come with a manual on mind-over-matter mechanics. However, there is some truth to it, and like most truths, it lies somewhere between the mystical and the mundane.

Case Study #1: The CBT Party Trick

Take, for instance, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which essentially says, “Change your thoughts, change your world.” Imagine a socially anxious chap at a party, convinced he's the dullest person there. Now, if he starts repeating affirmations like “I’m the life of this party,” he may begin to stand a little straighter, crack a joke, or actually look someone in the eye. The trick? He’s rewiring his mental circuitry, training his brain to behave differently, like nudging that wayward shopping cart onto the right track. Sure, he didn’t transform into a rockstar overnight, but the atmosphere shifted in response to his change in attitude.

Case Study #2: Sugar Pills and “Miracles”

Now, picture a slightly kooky aunt who swears by her “miracle crystals.” She keeps a chunk of what she calls “positive energy quartz” in her bag, and swears it cures her headaches. You find out later it’s just a chunk of fancy table salt, but there she is, living headache-free. It’s the placebo effect in action—a testament to how belief can indeed shape experience. The placebo’s power isn’t in the salt but in the mind’s expectation that it’ll work. Now, if we could only get that same effect with paying taxes…

Case Study #3: Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

Now, let's look at self-fulfilling prophecies, where expectations shape outcomes. Picture a student who believes he's terrible at math. He avoids practice because “what’s the point?” – leading him to fail his exams, thereby confirming his original belief. Conversely, a student who assumes they can get better at math puts in the effort, sees some improvement, and before long is solving equations like it’s second nature. It’s not magic, it’s mindset—but sometimes it feels like magic when it works, and like a scam when it doesn’t.

The Middle Path: Embracing Paradox

So, what’s the verdict? Can you create your own reality, or is it all just fluff? Here’s where we tread the middle ground. The mind can indeed shape the way we perceive, react to, and influence events. But it’s not as simple as thinking yourself into a better job, perfect health, or a stress-free commute. Life will toss its curveballs and, at times, feel more like an out-of-control shopping cart than a perfectly orchestrated manifestation.

You can change your lens on reality—like adjusting the prism’s angle so the light refracts differently—but you’re still dealing with the same beam of light. The “many” realities people speak of are often just variations of the same truth, viewed through different perspectives. Some situations will defy any mindset shift, like trying to meditate away a hurricane. That’s where we acknowledge the randomness and chaos that coexist with our inner world’s attempts at order.

Wrapping it Up – Reality, As It Is

So, when it comes to “creating your own reality,” perhaps it's best to treat it like navigating that wayward shopping cart. Yes, steer as best as you can, align your thoughts with your actions, and trust in the subtle influence of your mind. But remember: some forces are just outside your control. And that’s okay. Because the real trick isn’t in bending reality to your will, but in learning to dance with it as it wobbles toward the potato chips.

-- Pradeep K (Prady)

The Many Faces of The One

"Ekam Sat Vipraa Bahudaa Vadanti"

(Truth is One; Sages Call it by Many Names)

-- Rigveda

Imagine a prism held up to the light. The pure, white beam passes through, and on the other side, a spectrum of colors bursts forth—each one distinct, yet each a part of the same light. The colors didn’t come from nowhere; they were always contained within that one beam, waiting to be seen. Likewise, the prism doesn’t create the diversity, it simply reveals what was already there, hidden in plain sight. This is the dance of the “one” and the “many,” an interplay that spans across philosophies, faiths, and worldviews.

We often spend our lives focused on just one color, convinced it holds the entire truth. The devout believer may see only a bright red—passionate, singular, and absolute—claiming the truth of one God. The seeker of wisdom might contemplate the many hues in deep blue, each color a different path towards understanding, like the gods of polytheism. The mystic, bathed in indigo, claims there is no separation at all, that it’s all just different shades of the same thing: the oneness of Advaita. Then there’s the skeptic, whose lens shows no light or color, but perhaps a transparency, an openness to question if the colors were ever there to begin with.

But all these perspectives are still part of that same light. They are refracted truths.

The colors, in all their variety, don’t betray the oneness of the light; they are its expressions. The red is not more “right” than the blue, nor is the green closer to the truth than the yellow. Each one allows us to glimpse a different side of what it means to exist and search for meaning. The prism didn’t break the light; it showed us just how expansive that light is. The seeming conflict between dualism and non-dualism, between monotheism and polytheism, even between belief and skepticism, becomes a question of where we choose to look, not whether the light itself is real.

Yet, there’s a curious paradox here: To say “all is one” is not to flatten out the diversity into a bland sameness. Instead, it’s to recognize that the colors are not separate from the light but are one with it. They are inseparable expressions of the same source. Even the skeptic, who sees no light, may inadvertently reveal another dimension of the prism’s magic—one where the “nothingness” becomes an unspoken color of its own, an empty space that somehow gives shape to the others.

In Dvaita, the world appears as dual: the divine and the individual seem separate. It’s like seeing the prism from one angle where red and blue appear as distinct beams. But as we shift our perspective towards Advaita, we realize that these colors were never truly separate; they were all part of the light from the beginning, just different expressions emerging from how the prism bends and refracts the beam. The many can be seen as paths, not as ends. They guide us back to the singular light that’s always there—often unnoticed in its simplicity.

Even when it comes to monotheism, the idea of a singular deity, it’s not that far removed from recognizing the oneness beyond form. The idea of “one God” can be seen as the pure white light itself, while the many deities of polytheism are the spectrum that unfolds when that light passes through the prism. The divine expresses itself in countless ways, but the origin remains singular and unified. Thus, to speak of the "one" or the "many" is just to change the angle at which we look at the same light source.

And what of atheism, you might ask? Isn’t atheism a rejection of this entire picture, denying the light’s very existence? Not necessarily. If anything, atheism can be viewed as the act of dismantling the prism, stripping away the filters that make the colors appear at all. The irony is, in doing so, it may end up revealing the same pure, formless light—without the distraction of colors, without the need for any distinctions. The search for truth, even in atheism, might lead to that same realization: that there’s something fundamentally unbroken about the universe. The colors were interpretations, perceptions, but not illusions; they were the prism’s offering, not an indication that the light was ever divided.

So, what does all this mean for us as we try to live meaningful lives, amidst differing beliefs and worldviews? It means that to appreciate the whole light, we don’t need to deny any color. We can explore the red and the blue, engage with the deep greens, question the transparency, and accept that each viewpoint, while partial, belongs to a greater whole. The point isn’t to choose between Dvaita and Advaita, monotheism or atheism, but to recognize that they’re all different paths around the same mountain, different angles through which we experience the fullness of being.

By embracing the dance between “one” and “many,” we begin to see that our paths needn’t be limited by dogma or rigid thought. Instead, they can be expressions of the freedom that comes from recognizing that the entire spectrum belongs to us, not just one shade. We don’t need to strip away the colors to see the light, nor do we need to ignore the light to appreciate the depth of each color. We can hold the paradox, walk the contradictions, and understand that life, in all its varied hues, is pointing us back to the same truth: that all is one, and yet, within that oneness, there is space for endless diversity.

The prism has always been there. The light has always been there. And as long as we live in this world of forms and perceptions, the colors will be there too. We can look at them with a fresh gaze, not as opposing truths, but as complementary expressions of the same light that illuminates us all.

-- Pradeep K (Prady)