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The point of self-reflection is, foremost, to clarify and to find honesty. Self-reflection is the way to throw self-lies out and face the truth - however painful it might be to admit you were wrong. Wee seek consistency in ourselves, and so when e are faced with inconsistency, we struggle to deny.
Denial has no place in self-reflection, and so it is incumbent upon a person to admit his errors, to embrace them and to move along in a more positive direction
We can fool ourselves for all sorts of reasons. Mostly for the sake of our ego, of course, but sometimes, I now understand, because we are afraid.
For sometimes we are afraid to hope, because hope breeds expectation, and expectation can lead to disappointment. This is the reality of the world.
Reality is a curious thing. Truth is not as solid and universal as any of us would like it to be; selfishness guides perception, and perception invites justification. The physical image in the mirror, if not pleasing, can be altered by the mere brush of fingers through hair.
And so it is true that we can manipulate our own reality. We can persuade, even deceive. We can make others view us in dishonest ways. We can hide selfishness with charity, make a craving for acceptance into magnanimity, and amplify our smile to coerce a hesitant lover. The world is illusion, and often delusion, as victors write the histories and the children who die quietly under of a triumphant army never really existed. The robber baron becomes philanthropist in the final analysis, by bequeathing only that for which he had no more use. The ruler who sends young men and women to die becomes beneficent with the kiss of a baby. Every problem becomes a problem of perception to those who understand that reality, in reality, is what you make it to be.
This is the way of the world, but it is not the only way. It is not the way of the honorable man or woman who upholds the ideal of peace and honor. Theirs is not a manner of masquerading reality to alter perception, but a determination to a better reality, to follow a vision, and to trust their course is true, and it therefore follows, that perception of them will be just and kind.
For a more difficult alteration then the physical is the image that appears in the glass of introspection, the pureness or rot of the heart and soul.
For many, sadly, this is not an issue, for the illusion of their lives becomes self-delusion, a masquerade that revels in the applause and sees in a pittance to charity a stain remover for the soul. How many conquerors, I wonder, who crushed out the lives of tens of thousands, could not hear those cries of inflicted despair beyond the applause of those who believed the wars would make he world a better place? How many thieves, I wonder, hear not the laments of the victims and willingly blind themselves to the misery wrought of their violation under a blanket of their own suffered injustices?
When dose theft become entitlement?
There are those who cannot see the stains upon their souls. Some lack the capacity to look in the glass of introspection, perhaps, and others alter reality without and within.
Only there, in that place, is the road of redemption, for any of us. Only in facing honestly that image in the glass can we change the reality of who we are. Only in seeing the scars and the stains and the rot can we begin to heal.