Popular music is full of powerful messages about love – not just romantic love, but the kind that helps us see ourselves more clearly and kindly. From lyrics that promise, “You make me feel like I’m enough” to ballads that speak of being seen and accepted, there’s a recurring theme: that the love of another can reflect back to us the beauty we often overlook in ourselves.
I hear some of the most beautiful lyrics and emotional melodies at the weddings I conduct…From John Legend’s “Love your curves and all your edges / All your perfect imperfections” to Jame Morrison’s “You make me smile like the sun / Fall out of bed / Sing like a bird / Dizzy in my head”
They resonate with the idea that love isn’t just about connection; it’s a mirror, gently revealing the parts of ourselves we’ve forgotten or never dared to admire.
It’s this deeply human idea, that we sometimes need others to help us see beyond our self-doubt, that inspired the poem Self-Perception, Self-Deception. It’s a reflection on how we can become trapped in a one-sided view of who we are, and how liberating it can be when someone else’s love opens a window to a fuller, kinder perspective.
Self-perception…self-deception
I walk alone through shadowed wood, my thoughts like a quiet tide,
Believing I am carved in stone: one truth, one face, one side.
“I am the weak,” I told the trees, “my footsteps slow and small,”
And every leaf that brushed my cheek seemed to endorse it all…
I wear my flaws like heavy chains, a tale I know so well,
I fed the fire of my self-doubt each time I tripped and fell.
But came a voice, both kind and strange, that echoed through the pine,
“You see yourself through cloudy glass but that’s your view, not mine.”
A mirror made of other eyes was held before my eyes,
And in its light I saw anew…a self I had not surmised.
“You’re brave,” said one, “though you can’t see that the storms you walk are wide.”
“You’re kind,” said two, “in quiet ways that slip beneath your pride.”
“You’re more,” said three, “than shame and doubt, more than you daily rehearse
Your story isn’t just one single-thread, and nor are you wholly cursed.”
And suddenly the chains grew thin, like mist beneath the sun,
The truths I’d claimed were not the whole – they were merely part of one.
For every fault, a strength was there, in balance, and not in disguise,
And I? I’m neither monster nor saint, but a human, who’s full and who’s wise.
So now I walk with softer step, no longer self-confined,
My eyes still mine, but richer now with other views combined.
Let no one write their tale alone, nor wear one mask for too long
The self we know is but a verse in another’s fuller song.
Latansani 