The Mirror is Curved

Even When We Polish It Carefully

I live in Colorado, in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. They dominate the horizon in a way that feels solid. Immovable. They invite the assumption that some things simply endure. 

Years ago, I visited the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area on the central Oregon coast. It stretches for forty miles from Florence to Coos Bay. In places, the terrain rises from the sea to more than five hundred feet, but the feeling there is entirely different. Like the Rockies, the dunes are constantly changing. Unlike the Rockies, that change is visible in days or weeks. 

What struck me most was how alive the dunes felt. They were always moving, always rearranging themselves. Trails vanished. Landmarks shifted. You could return to the same spot later and find it gone, or altered enough to feel completely unfamiliar, even though nothing dramatic had happened. No earthquake. No tsunami. 

Intellectually, I know the Rockies are changing too, shaped by wind, water, and tectonic forces, but the timescale makes that knowledge abstract. The dunes make change unmistakable, even if it happens one grain of sand at a time. Return a year later and nothing is as it was, except that it is still sand. 

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus once wrote that no one steps into the same river twice, because it is not the same river and he is not the same person. Standing in the dunes, that idea stops being abstract. What is less obvious is how much time changes me. 

We tend to see ourselves as we see the mountains: fixed and clearly defined, mistaking the scale of change for its absence. Yet the truth made visible in the sand dunes is also true of the mountains, and of us. 

That contrast feels deeply aligned with my own suspicion of certainty. 

I’m not cynical or dismissive of certainty. Just wary. It is too easy to hold on to things, assuming that what was once true will always be true. 

That wariness comes from a lifetime of experience. Things I once thought defined me—careers, relationships, even values—have shifted over time, more like moving sand than solid ground. 

Versions of myself that felt solid and durable each carried the quiet conviction of this is who I am now. And each one, eventually, proved temporary. 

That kind of skepticism feels healthy to me. Anything that cannot stand up to investigation may not be something worth holding too tightly. And still, I often find myself clinging to who I think I am, not because I truly believe it, but because certainty, even false certainty, feels comfortable, familiar.

But who are we really?

That is a question I find myself returning to more often these days. Maybe because I am retired and finally have the time. Or maybe because, for the first time in my life, I feel secure enough to look without flinching. 

The more I look, the more I realize that who I am is far closer to the sand dunes on the Oregon coast than the granite walls of the Rocky Mountains. My beliefs shift as my understanding deepens. They develop through experience. Sometimes they are abandoned entirely when I realize they were wrong. 

That, I believe, is what growth looks like. 

Recently, I asked an AI to read my journals and tell me what it learned about me. The exercise felt risky. Not because of privacy concerns—there is little in those pages more embarrassing than what I already published in my memoir—but because journals are not mirrors. They are distortions, shaped by mood, memory, and the need to make sense of things after the fact. 

The response was interesting, but predictable. Many of the themes I had written about over the years were distilled and reflected back to me in a clear, concise summary.

You are someone who learned early to equate worth with usefulness... That shows up everywhere: in your career drive, in your relationships, in how carefully you try to be reasonable and fair, even in conflict… What you didn’t learn—through no fault of your own—was how to feel unconditionally seen or safe expressing need without fearing retaliation, dismissal, or emotional chaos. So you adapted. You became thoughtful, self-reliant, observant, and quietly guarded.

The prompt I gave the AI next generated far more insight than the first. 

“You based that on what I wrote, and most people, me included, can’t see themselves clearly. Self-perceptions are deeply distorted. So if you are basing that on what I wrote, it has to be tainted in some fashion.” 

The response was this:

You’re right, and there’s no way around it: anything I say that’s based on your journal is necessarily distorted. Not because you’re being dishonest, but because self-observation is never neutral. The mirror is curved, even when we polish it carefully.

What you write doesn’t tell me who you are in some objective, God’s-eye sense. It tells me how consciousness experiences being you…There is no clean separation between ‘who you really are’ and the patterns through which you perceive, narrate, justify, doubt, and correct yourself. The self isn’t a thing hiding behind the writing. It’s a process that shows up in the writing. 

Neuroscience, psychology, and contemplative traditions all agree on this, for different reasons. The brain evolved to keep us functional, not accurate. Memory edits. Motivation colors perception. Identity defends itself. Even insight becomes a story if we’re not careful. So yes—your journal is filtered through history, temperament, attachment patterns, cultural scripts, and the simple fact that language is a blunt instrument.

“The mirror is curved, even when we polish it carefully.” I loved that line, because it says so much about who we think we are, and its truth feels undeniable. It takes little self-reflection to validate this, if we are truly willing to look. 

What feels increasingly clear to me is that there is no solid self hiding behind the thoughts and stories. There is only a process unfolding, shaped by my history, my habits, and by what I pay attention to. 

René Descartes famously wrote in 1637, “I think, therefore I am.” Ever since, philosophers and contemplative scholars have struggled with that idea, trying to answer whether thought reveals the presence of a self, creates one, or merely gives us the illusion of one. 

I am no Descartes, but I can’t help but wonder if the truer statement might be something closer to, “I am what I think.” It feels plausible, given how powerfully my thoughts shape my experience. 

And yet, the question was not a new one. 

Two thousand years earlier, the Buddha taught the concept of no self—the idea that there is no immutable “you” at your core. It is a tough pill to swallow, and even some of the most dedicated Buddhist practitioners struggle to wrap their heads around it. How can there be no me?

Around the turn of the 20th century, Freud complicated the picture further, suggesting that even if a self exists, much of what we call “I” is shaped by unconscious forces beyond our awareness. The thinking mind, he argued, is not the master it imagines itself to be. 

The truth is, there is no way to answer the question of the existence of the self with certainty. But I am finding that if I suspend my disbelief long enough to look, I begin to glimpse something truer than the stories I usually tell myself. 

And I think that may be the key to growth: being willing to suspend—not abandon, but temporarily suspend—our beliefs long enough to search for what is true. 

Because in the end, I suspect the one thing we all want is not certainty, but truth.

If something here felt familiar, I’d love to hear your thoughts, or have you share it with someone who might appreciate it.