Beautiful Narcissus

I think the person who named Narcissus had a jealous bone to pick.

Would you look at Daffodil and think, "golly, that's a vain flower"?

In the myth, Narcissus was a man of extreme beauty. A prophecy was foretold of him. He would live a long life should he never recognize himself. Legend has it that after rejecting more than one beautiful nymph, he finds his reflection in a pool of water and falls madly in love with himself. He then dies of his own vanity and a daffodil grows in his place.

I don't look at a daffodil and think it's a flower of extreme beauty...

How can I judge that though? What makes one flower, or one person, more beautiful than the other?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

The other day I wondered whether the slice of wisdom is a more literal statement.

Maybe beauty is in my actual eye.

This article is about to get right weird, right quick.

Okay, hear me out.

Have you ever seen a photo of a human retina? It looks like the sun.

You can think of the retina like the film in an old-fashioned camera. It's the surface on which photons land to tell your brain what you're looking at. I just told you the retina looks like the sun but it also looks like the surface of Mars.

An eyeball is the shape of a planet.

Have you ever gotten lost in someone's pupil, like you're peering into deep space swirling with the galaxies?

I like the eye.

Let's dive a little deeper.

I love seeing a photo of someone and thinking nothing much of their appearance, only to discover how beautiful they are in real life. This vibrant being is so much greater than the sum of their flattened features on a picture.

I also love when that phenomenon goes a step further. Getting to know someone can make them so much more beautiful. Like there's a deep shift in your perception between your first encounter and your tenth. A person who is wonderful and three-dimensionally emotional. A person who surprises you by their candor or their sudden fragility. A person's body when they show you what they're passionate about. A person dancing.

A person running.

Beauty is so much more than a reflection in a mirror.

Have you heard of a true mirror? Standard mirrors flip the image of us, so what we see in the mirror is not what others do. I've never peered into a true mirror, but I hear you do not recognize yourself at first. I hear it sends you into a spiral of self-questioning.

The funny thing about a flower is that it never does see itself.

There's a blind spot on the retina where the optic nerve attaches.

We can never truly see ourselves. That's why we're so curious what we look like, how we come across.

Is that what Narcissus The Vain was missing?

Is our blind spot our humility?

Perhaps the mystery of our beauty is the most beautiful thing about us. We are not wholly perceivable without those around us.

Narcissus will never know how beautiful it is, and it doesn't care.

I like to think it knows when I'm admiring it, though.

I want it to know I honour its effort to be bold, upright and joyful.

I hope you bow to your friends from time to time. Or even just give them a little head nod, or a hug.

I hope you tell your friends how beautiful they are.

I hope you look into your own eyeball in the mirror and find the galaxy there.

You are beautiful, and you are worthy of your mysterious reflection.

Thanks for being here.

Iz <3