I love a good fairy tale – fairy tales have happy endings. So of course when my Internet home page featured an all day ad promoting the new TV show, Once Upon A Time, I was compelled to give it a look-see. The basic premise of the show is that the Wicked Queen from Snow White put an evil curse on all our beloved fairy tale characters. This curse brought these characters to our world, thereby depriving them of their happy endings. And Snow White’s daughter is the only one who can save them. Yep, Snow White has a daughter – betcha didn’t know that. I didn’t either. This particular interpretation gives us a peek into life after Snow White rides off into the sunset with Prince Charming. And this story featured a scene in which Snow White had to remind her Prince that the Queen is crazy and evil – “she poisoned an apple because she thought I was prettier than her.”
That got me thinking… Dysfunctional behavior aside, why did the Queen think that Snow White was prettier? As the readers or viewers of the story, we’re led to believe that Snow White is the fairest in the land because she’s the protagonist of that particular story. But why did the Queen think that? The Queen thought Snow White was prettier because she believed her mirror.
What if the Queen wasn’t the master villain of the story? What if the Queen was merely a pawn, a puppet whose strings were controlled by the master puppeteer – the mirror? What if that Magic Mirror was the true villain? Hmmmm…. The story takes a bit of a twist now, doesn’t it?
The truth – sad or liberating, depending on your point of view – is that every mirror is really a Magic Mirror. Mirrors are magical because they don’t reflect physical reality – they reflect our state of mind. What we see changes depending on our mood!
The next time you go to peek in the mirror, ask yourself what you are looking to see. Are you looking for information – to see if your hair is combed or if you’ve got food in your teeth? Or are you looking for judgment – to count the emerging lines on your face or to see if you “look fat”? That magic mirror will give us what we ask for. If we are looking for condemnation, we will find it. And if we are looking for beauty, we will find that.
The mirror simply gives us that for which we ask. So be conscious of your intentions, and ask wisely. Then you, too, can have a happy ending.