THE MIRROR DOESN’T LIE

I never thought I would be inter­ested in watch­ing the Harry Pot­ter movies. Mainly because my inter­ests don’t lie in mys­ti­cal stuff. But one rainy day in Novem­ber I sat down with the first movie – Harry Pot­ter and the Sorcerer’s Stone — and I was hooked.

I watched all 8 movies within 2 weeks. My hus­band wasn’t too happy with me (each movie is at least 2 1/2 hours long), but I couldn’t help it. I had been drawn in and needed to know how it ended.

In that first movie, Harry finds a mir­ror at his school and in his reflec­tion, he is imme­di­ately sur­rounded by his dead par­ents. The mir­ror is called The Mir­ror of Erised.

Pro­fes­sor Dum­b­le­dore, the Head­mas­ter at Hog­warts, describes it this way: “The hap­pi­est man on earth will look into the mir­ror and see only him­self, exactly as he is. It shows noth­ing more and noth­ing less then the deep­est and most des­per­ate desires of our heart. It gives not knowl­ege or truth. Men have wasted away in front of it, even gone mad. It does not do to dwell on dreams, and for­get to live.”

I started think­ing about what I would see in that mir­ror. Would the deep­est and most des­per­ate desires of my heart be com­pas­sion­ate and char­i­ta­ble? Would my desires revolve around help­ing oth­ers and mak­ing life eas­ier for those who most need it? Or would van­ity and mate­ri­al­ism show up in the reflection?

More than likely — and as much as I would hate to admit this — the mir­ror would reveal the lat­ter. No mat­ter how hard I try to be char­i­ta­ble, com­pas­sion­ate, and altru­is­tic, I also allow those darker traits to seep in when I am not pay­ing attention.

I am glad that The Mir­ror of Erised isn’t in my home. But I am also aware that I need to be present each day, liv­ing for not only myself but for oth­ers around me.

Today I need to make choices that remove mate­ri­al­ism and van­ity, and instead reflect an atti­tude more con­cerned with help­ing others.

What image would you see?