The Man in the Mirror

Identity…

It defines individuality of a person, place or thing.
It describes a person’s uniqueness,
It classifies a person’s self, his nature, his personality or character.
A person’s identity labels him, gives a name to the distinctiveness of his person.
It serves to give a face to the essentials of somebody or something.
Setting up the standard characteristics that makes for recognition
As belonging uniquely to himself or herself, oneself or another being
In what constitutes the individual personality,
Nationality, and exceptionality.
Identity details the fact or condition of being what or which form of something,
Alike or sameness
Or similarity to me or you and who should be linked to who –
Who’s included, who’s excluded, who’s deluded or precluded.

A person’s features identifies his place of residence,
His common establishment, eminence and prominence
Of his family heritage,
His genealogy lineage,
The makeup of his roots,
Where he came from before when
Who was the father or mother long ago…
With the recognizable factors which make the person featured in the mirror
Projecting the representative markings
That distinguishes one from another brother,
Who you are in conjunction with the masses of others,
Where do you fit in the scheme of nature’s embodiments,
What kind of person are you as perceived by others.
What aspects of being who you are typifies your personality as it conforms
To the personality of others.

What is it which makes for recognition?

What makes oneself one self?

Is it from what fabric, what color, what origin, what likeness, what unlikeness
You are aligned, resigned, confined, entwined of mind?
How does your identity identify your moral fiber, your appeal,
Your integrity, reputation, sense of self worth?
How does it congeal with your birth?

Your personality traits are descriptive of you being who you are.
The personality is the quality of existing as a person.
Your behavior patterns -
Your good and bad qualities -
Is your persona.
Displayed in a hand-held glass bottle.
Your persona
Being – guise, role, part, façade, front face.

The totality of your attitudes, interests, emotional responses, social roles,
Define the characteristics that make somebody appealing or unappealing.
The image of character and personality that somebody wants
To show the outside world
Is the personal psychological self
Profiled in an outward pretense,
To give an impression of an image created for show,
Imaging to be what is not so.

But it is patterns of thought
Which define a person’s behavior.
His ego determines his opinion of himself;
His idea of his or her own importance or worth,
By birth or re-birth,
His self-esteem
Self-image
Sense of self
Is
The man in the mirror
Who is
Defined as
Portrayed by
Expressed in
Depicted as
Telling and foretelling of
A designation place with
A handle
Dubbed to be
Entitled
Or not
Branded to be so doing
Referred to, inferred, preferred, interred
As specified by,
Or as chosen to be,
Or not to be.

Which suggest that which is
Reputed and presumed to be thus and so
As identified
By the I.D. bracelet of the brand and label given at birth
Or a time when being
Known as a person with or without the character or characteristics
Of the persons of choice
Gave voice
To belong
In a group
With the chickens in a likely coup
Was reason to rejoice.

Clouding the subject of
A person’s uniqueness -
His difference from others in a way
That makes somebody or something special and worthy of note,
Being one of a kind,
Is a rare find which unique-nesses connote.
But comes with a troubling mind
Being confined
While longing to be free
To just
Be.

And so
The mirror invariably cracks
Under the weight of
The variable image
Looking back.

Which makes Michael Jackson’s death
All the more
A reflection of our
Crisis of identity.

“And all of us, who with unveiled face, continue to behold (as in a mirror)
the glory of the Lord, are constantly being transformed into His very own image
in ever increasing splendor and from one degree of glory to another;
for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.” 11Cor. 3:18


Ruth