Jettie, if you ever read this, I want you to know I wrote it partly for you. One day, maybe in our Year of Creativity book, I hope you’ll find these words and feel like I’m sitting across from you, just trying to explain as simply as I can what I’ve come to believe about the mind, the self, and this strange thing we call consciousness.
The easiest way to say it is this: everything you experience is like a mirror. People, memories, feelings, even the voice in your head—they all get reflected back to you. But here’s the important part: you are not the reflection. Not even the clever little voice in your head that says “I’m the one watching this” is really you. That’s just another layer in the mirror.
Who you really are is the quiet space that all of it shows up in. The screen behind the movie. The mirror itself. Thoughts, emotions, choices—they all come and go. But the fact that you can notice them at all points to something deeper: the part of you that just observes.
Scientists have discovered something that makes this even clearer. When people are asked to make a simple choice—like pushing a button—the brain actually starts the process before the person feels like they’ve decided. In other words, the story of “me choosing” is really just the mind catching up. That can sound strange, but to me it’s freeing. It shows that the voice we usually call “me” isn’t running the show—it’s just another reflection in the mirror.
If that’s true, then freedom isn’t about forcing the river to flow a certain way. It’s about realizing that we are the riverbed, or maybe even just the stillness that notices the river at all. From here, everything is reflection—friends, strangers, old hurts, new joys. Some mirrors are clear. Some are distorted. Some make us laugh, like funhouse mirrors. But all of them teach us about what’s alive in us.
And if who we really are is the observer—the mirror itself—then we don’t need to cling so tightly to the reflections. They come and go. We can love them, learn from them, let them pass, and remain grounded in the quiet space that notices it all.
That’s what I want you to know: you are not just the stories in your head, or the roles people see you in, or even the wise little voice that says, “I’m watching.” You’re the noticing itself. The mirror. And that’s something no one can take away from you.
And when you look into that mirror one day and notice the noticing itself—know that I am there too, in that same quiet space, watching the river flow alongside you.