Tan and I have this ongoing discussion/debate/amicable friction about the metaphor of "mirrors." Tan likes to claim, in his guruesque, hyperbolic, and very ironically-genuine style, that we are all mirrors to one another. In other words, I am a mirror to you and you are a mirror to me. Through you I see me and through me you see you.

Since the first time I heard this metaphor, I had an itching sensation about it. I strongly contested the metaphor of the mirror. As time went on and Tan said mirrors a million times more, mostly in appropriate situations where the metaphor holds, my protestations calmed down and chilled out in tone. Yet, to this day, I find a problem with it. So I am writing this for three purposes. First, to show how seeing the other as a mirror is a valid stance, one that we can actually experientially uphold. Second, to demonstrate the shortcomings of the image of the mirror for understanding our relation to others. And third, for provoking Tan to respond to my writing, perhaps as a rebuttal, by making a film about the metaphor of mirrors.

I do think Tan is on to something important, but, at the same time, the metaphor fails to do justice to how the other person is more than a mirror, and exceeds our reflections. And at this point, Tan would say, with indignation towards my misunderstanding of his metaphor, that the other might be a distorted mirror, or he might just add any adjective before the word "mirror" to describe the way the other reflects us back. But I think the real shortcoming comes not with the need to qualify what type of mirror the other is, but what mirrors do: reflection.

Let's take it from "reflection" as an act, a way, or a mode of happening: reflecting. First place to investigate reflecting is obviously any shiny surface like mirrors, dark glasses, aluminum foil or the gleaming surface of the lake into which Narcissus fell and drowned.

Mirrors are pretty special tools, and the mythological imagery of reflection has been around and potent for a long time. When artisans perfected the mirror-making process, I believe, this definitely changed the self-understanding of our species. Now, we could see our faces. Our own countenance opened up to our gaze, brought to the surface and visibility. We became a perceptual object for ourselves, something that can be well-defined and held by our gaze. Perhaps, an alienation followed this self-seeing. Now, we were here and there simultaneously, split from ourselves as an external image.

Seeing itself in the mirror and coming to terms with the fact that it can be seen from the outside, being open to others’ gaze, is a formative phase of an infant's development into childhood. Perhaps, mirrors, in the grand scale of history, accomplished this for our species: they slightly fucked with our self-perception, but also brought us to a developed awareness of ourselves as social beings, beings who are seen by others, and simultaneously, who can see themselves through others. I mean, usually a developed sense of who we are, a shift in our self-knowledge, grows out of being, at least, a little fucked up. Often the fucked-upness anticipates a new insight.

Anyhow, let's leave that tangential sprout in the prior paragraphs and return to our task: how do others reflect us back? The other person's gaze has a magical and sometimes an oppressive effect on us. Imagine you are on the street and about to do something which is not socially acceptable like littering. You shoot your Coca-Cola can into the garbage bin from 14 feet out as if you are Stephen Curry lighting up the stadium. You shoot, the can hits the rim, and falls out. "Eh," you say, "whatever." Right when you were about to walk away, you see someone sitting on the church steps looking at you. Their gaze motivates you to pick up the can and put it in the garbage bin like a proper citizen. The other's gaze reflects back to you what you have been doing from a different angle, and this angle "corrects" or changes your behaviour. Through their eyes, you see your own reflection, of what you've done, of who you are. And this is not just who you are "for them." You embody their attitude of "that's wrong" and act in a way that confirms their judgement. It becomes, between you and the other person, a shared attitude, a common judgement.

There are also much more existential, much more personal ways of mirroring. Think of this. I go over to my friends' house. They are a couple I love and hang out with. We chat for hours every Friday at their apartment until that hour I have to leave to catch the last subway train. One day, in front of me, they get into an argument. What seems like an insignificant topic spirals into a massive argument about their character and overall relationship. One accuses the other for not doing what he wants. The other says, "but I offered to do that earlier and you didn't care. Now, we are hanging out, having a conversation, and this is the time you are asking for the same thing I asked you about earlier." The back and forth between them heats up. One side demands rational justifications for the other's behaviour and the other side throws many justification which fail to justify. The justifications get sillier with ever-more heated demand.

The one who can't justify feels cornered and lays out even more untenable justifications. The invalid justifications infuriate the other one, and with a redder passion, he asks for further justifications. I watch this for a good thirty minutes. As I see this unfold, I realize they are playing out the same "logic" or narrative of fight that I often have with my girlfriend. "Oh my god," I think to myself, "this is what we do. This is hopeless. There is no end to it. He simply just asked for a little understanding, attention, and care." I realize that's all my girlfriend asked for too, but instead, I just demanded reasons for her need to be cared for in that moment.

My friends' argument mirrored my own situation to me. I called my girlfriend the next morning and told her what I saw and how it allowed me to understand our relation, how we sometimes get stuck on silly things, how I hem her into a tight, oppressive corner of rationality - if you can call it that!

So far, the mirror metaphor looks like a good one. And, this is how Tan gets you. He is a smart MF. One, he knows in what situations the metaphor is revealing, and, two, he uses it sooo many times that it is bound to be revealing at some point or another. Like a jokester, if you make enough jokes, some have to succeed and get some laughter. Yet, this is where we have to split paths and see others as more than mirrors. Now, I will lay out a few point which will challenge the metaphor. I think Tan would agree with my initial points and he would say, these points can still be applied to his metaphor without shattering it.

First of all, when we think of the interpersonl being of humans as mirrors, the mirror-as-a-thing puts us off track. Mirrors, despite being reflective and revealing, are still thingly tools used for a purpose. You can put two mirrors in front of each other and they will reflect back and forth infinitely many times. However, they do not come to be through this process of reflecting. They are made and then reflect. Whereas, I believe, who we are do not come to be in this manner. We are not first and foremost well-defined individual beings, which then reflect others and see our reflections through others. Rather, we come to be, as who we are, through this ongoing reflection already. We come through the reflecting. The reflecting makes us who we are.

Very young infants, when encountered with objects fall silent, and find themselves taken over by the object. In a sense, they fall into the object and become alienated. They can't make sense of what the thing is so they get mesmerized by it without really engaging with it. Like deers caught in headlights, they look at the object for an extended time until a sound or other stimuli call for their attention. However, when infants are looking at their caregiver's face, they are able to engage with the caregiver. They mimic the caregiver's hand gestures (put your finger to your mouth in front of an infant, and watch them do the same), they follow the gaze of the other person, and if they have developed some motor skills, infants might even reach out to the other person. This is how we learn to be human: by embodying others' gestures, words, actions, habits, preferences, etc. We adopt common acts around us and use them. If this was not the case, we could never learn to speak.

Same happens between parents and children, close friends, and romantic partners. These are the relations which clearly demonstrate our malleability and plasticity, that is, how who we are is never so well-defined as we like to think, but always open to change, in motion, and transforming. A close friendship, the continuous reflections between two friends, make up who these people are. It constantly transforms their sense of who they are. Our best friend affirms certain aspects about us, enjoys them, and those sides of us come to the forefront even more; they become our "identity." In contrast, sides which they snub at gradually disappear. We realize, "oh, ye. That's something I do and don't like about myself."

These relationships, perhaps what we can call ongoing-reflections without mirrors, or reflections through which the mirrors become mirrors in the first place, make up who we are. I am not I prior to the other, like a self-standing mirror, but I am I with the other through the "we" we are. I think Tan would have no problem with this part. I believe after living together for two years, we have a shared understanding of how there is no me without you; there is no I without the other. We are primordially bonded. And when that bond is artificially and violently split, as it is the case with solitary confinement, we all know how it can drive a person to an impoverished existence, impersonality, and even insanity.

Now we need to go back to reflecting. One of those friends, who was caught up in an argument with his partner, is a practicing psychotherapist, and a good one at it too. We often have long conversations about therapy, interpersonal relationships, how to approach the task of therapy, and all that good stuff. When we first began talking, he had this emphasis on "reflecting back." The good therapist's work is to reflect what the patient is saying and feeling back to the patient, he would say. In this way, the therapist can share the patient's emotional narrative, and, at the same time, be a mirror for the patient to see themselves. As you might have guessed, I had an itch about this claim too.

In this reflection, there is an implicit drive towards objectivity. And, I think, there is some validity to that. We do not want the therapist to be judgemental, bring her own "baggage" into the client's feelings and to the session. If the therapist does more than reflecting, the worry is that her existential and psychological history could negatively affect the patient's self-understanding and comfort with the therapist.

But the therapist is not an objective, reflective surface. She is a living, breathing, and if she is a good therapist, caring, trusting, and insightful participant. I suggested another word to my friend instead of reflecting back, a word which I think after watching several recorded therapy sessions, is more appropriate to the task of the therapist. And this is "emphasis." The therapist is not merely reflecting. She is picking up on the movements of the client's body, the changes in his tone, where he gets stuck, where the tears well up in his eyes, and also, where his face shines with joy. Patients sometimes have a tendency to go on and on just like we all do in conversations. A well-attuned listener, a good therapist, or a close friend hears the struggle, the pain, and the joy. He hears where the conversation had taken a turn, and when the speaker moves away from this turn, he brings the speaker back to it, and simply asks a question, "I think before you began talking about your friend's wedding day, you said, the day before the wedding was really hard and heavy. How was that?" And he leaves it at that. He hopes that his subtle emphasis of what his friend had just said will bring his friend back to that moment, and allow him to focus on it.

So now, we have another word: focus. Emphasizing brings something into focus. Mirrors don't do that on their own nor reflection does it. A distorted mirror might bring some aspects into focus and some out of focus, but I don't think that really does justice to how it happens between people. The distortions of the carnival mirrors do not reveal affective significance but only hilarious superficial images.

When I witnessed my friends' argument, it brought something about my life into focus. It revealed what had happened in a new sense, with a new meaning. It opened it up and brought it to the clear. Their emotional history, romantic narrative, cycles of quarrelling, revealed a meaning of my situation. This was not a causal process, or an objective association merely due to objective similarities between situations. It was rather imbued with personal and emotional motivation. My relationship is significant to me. The argument which sprung out of a minute disagreement between me and my girlfriend hurt me for several days. It bothered me. Me and my girlfriend were disappointed at each other. I couldn't really understand what had happened, and after a few days, the argument sunk into the background of my life. We went on with our lives. My friends' arguments coupled with my care for my relationship allowed my past argument to come out of the background and take a well-defined figure. I saw it once again, but in a different way. In a way which laid it out right in front of my eyes. It brought something from the background, something out of focus, in to the forefront, as a focused figure.

Outside of these concerns, reflection is a vaguely general and grand word to understand our relation to others. First, our perception is not like the still images of reflection. We perceive ourselves, others, and relate to others in engagement. We hug them, we get a hint of their perfume, we listen to them as we nod along to their story. We work on projects together. Our bodies move and align with theirs rather than providing us with mostly visual and still reflections of ourselves through others. Moreover, we relate in so many other ways even if we limit this relationality to moments we learn something about ourselves through the other. Sometimes this happens through emphasis, focus, jokes, cautions, rage, co-creating, and all types of various emotional phenomena. Reflection flattens the diversity and vibrancy of all these different modes of relationality.

Finally, I want to touch on the invisible. By invisible, I don't mean something that is always invisible and forever stays concealed. It's just this precious aspect of others and ourselves which gives a depth to our lives, characters, and being. As some of our sides are revealed through others and as we reveal certain sides of them in our particular relationships, conversations, or shared-activities, this revelation only happens thanks to many other sides being simultaneously concealed. When I go back home to Turkey, numerous sides of my existence in Toronto are concealed. But at the same time, sides that are not so visible in Toronto show themselves. Place, language, and different others all play a part in this. Being authentically-me is not to carry the same person from one situation to another as it is, but to learn how to dance, play, and if necessary, stand up and resist in different situations. If authenticity was to be "the" me in every situation, the world would break me. I would lack all existential flexibility. Like there is no me without you, there is no me without me-being-in-a-situation. And different situations disclose and conceal different sides of a person.

I think the mirror analogy falls short here too. The mirror and its reflectiveness primarily call for visibility, for clearing, for appearing. But every appearing is concealing and every concealing is appearing. I am not laid out flat through my relationships with others, as long as they are not oppressive others who want to flatten me into a thing, hold me down, and capture me in superficial terms. Others reveal our depths when they attend to us and we, hopefully, do the same for them.

I bet Tan has some fascinating responses to my points. I bet he can find ways to develop his metaphor to incorporate these aspects; or, who knows, maybe he will say, "no, man. That aint' it!” I won't, like a good academic philosophy writer, refute my own points to later strengthen them to "protect" my arguments. There is no need for such things between friends. A friend with his charitable reading will do those anyway. But I will leave Tan with one question: if I can raise all these questions, why stay with the metaphor of mirrors rather than come up with something else? I hope that was cheeky enough Tan, and encourages you to set on another artistic journey, a beautiful film where we all see our own "reflections" through your "mirror."

D - 17/6/2022