Who are you when nobody is watching? Who are you when you’re not watching someone else?
The turning point of the pandemic has brought new words into our dictionary of a contemporary reality: isolation, facemasks, social distancing, loneliness, or well-being. Obviously, it was a time for economic, political, and social transformation; but also, for internal transformation.
How has looking ourselves into the mirror changed us without an external look of the world judging us behind our shoulders?
There has been a radical change. We don’t need more filters towards our own persona due to social pressure or cultural stigmas outside our own homes because the fear of meeting external social expectations has been vanishing slowly. There is no one to examine us to prove who we are or who we are not. Doing or not doing; being or not being, whichever is fine.
We find ourselves with specters of our own reflections underneath a magnifying glass of our actions. It can be throughout the reading of our memories in every photograph or letter of the past to yearn for those moments of nostalgia and happiness; noticing that you don’t need that daily cigarette inside of an antisocial routine or needing it altogether. Finding well-being is a complex process, as well as contradictory. You might miss going to reunions, but not the social expectations and pressure. You feel complete at times, and sometimes, like those pieces are falling apart. Who’s going to judge you if nobody is watching? You start taking care, not only of your image, but of your soul’s needs.
It’s okay to do everything you didn’t do before or stop doing what you did before. The point is to find the balance inside oneself and reflect upon how the world changes, transforming ourselves.
It’s about mirroring our souls into our actions.
