I think I might have uncovered a phenomenon that so far has eluded scientific explanation. If fully understood it could potentially reshape the way we look at the world. Of course, I am talking about the bathroom mirror. But let me start at the beginning.
Over the course of the years, I sensed an increasing discomfort when wearing trousers with a belt or simply trying to fasten my seat belt when driving. This seems to be a common experience among men around 40, the internet informed me. Metabolism slows down, but we continue to eat (and drink) as we did in our youth. The result is an expanding waistline.
I decided to counter this development by engaging in physical activity. Gyms were never my thing, so I downloaded a weight-loss app that had a logo of an obese man inside of which emerged a healthy and fit Adonis body. I was intrigued. Immediately, I started to set up my personal training program by selecting exercises that were illustrated by little animated figures doing jumping jacks, abdominal crunches, planks, and many other things I hadn’t heard of before.
The first session was brutal, but I managed to pick up a routine and rather quickly settled for two to three workouts per week. Of course, I eagerly used every opportunity in the bathroom to peek into the mirror and follow the transformation of my dough-like body into He-Man. And indeed, after about two months I could sense some changes. Everything looked tighter, I even imagined that muscles started to show in places that had so far only been used to store beer.
I started to enjoy my bathroom visits as they provided me with the opportunity to confirm the amazing effects of my new workout routine. Every time I seemed to discover new muscles and even a V-cut seemed to emerge. I was on a rocketship to zero body fat. I even started posing a bit, immediately stopping myself as if someone was watching. Perhaps body building was still in the cards for me?
Then it all came tumbling down. It was a Saturday, and I had taken my daughter to a waterfall with a bathing area, where we were enjoying our time. I decided to climb the stones below the waterfall to take a natural shower. After a while I realized that my daughter had taken my cell phone and started to take pictures of me. I automatically adapted my posing routine, trying to make it look natural. These photos will be the ultimate evidence that my rigorous training exercise paid out, I thought to myself, already eager to swipe through my future bodybuilding set card.
I swam back to the shore and picked up my phone. When I looked at the photos my daughter had just taken, I saw a balding, middle-aged, translucently white and clearly overweight man. This must have been a mistake, I thought. She took photos of the wrong person by accident. I hectically started zooming in and was confronted with the brutal truth that this man was in fact me. How could I not have seen this? How did I miss the double chin? I stared at the pictures for what felt like an eternity and saw my daughter’s worried look. Were the photos not okay? They were perfect, I reassured her. I drove home a defeated man.
Back home, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, my once-reliable ally in this journey. It had lied to me—or perhaps I had lied to myself. The muscles I thought I saw, the transformation I believed in, were figments of my hopeful imagination. The bathroom mirror wasn’t just glass; it was a portal into how I wanted to see myself, not how I truly was. And yet, as I stared at my reflection, I realized something else: the man in the mirror, flawed and far from perfect, had still shown up, week after week, trying to be better. Maybe that was worth more than the abs I’d never have. Maybe, just maybe, the bathroom mirror was still my friend after all.
Inner View 