The Face in the Mirror

“Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, raising their performance to a higher standard, building a personality beyond its normal limitations.”-Peter Drucker

Already in 2005, I was feeling the inevitable disappointment of looking in the mirror and thinking, “How did that face get in my mirror?” And so I wrote a poem: 

The glass is a lie.

All it captures is time’s cruel ravages

    Gravity’s insistent tugs

          The footprints of the hours walking over our bodies

If you want to see who you truly are in this world,

Look

     at the face of the child you are teaching

Listen

     to the sound of the strings you are plucking

Taste

    the soup you have so lovingly prepared

Gaze

    into the eyes of your lover at the moment of union

That’s the real story.

Pay no mind to the lies of cameras and mirrors.

Your true face shines out

       in the way you affect the world.

After the first week with these Special Course Orff teachers, they had to write up their “takeaways” from the classes. I have a certain sense of how it’s going for them by observing their participation, their level of enthusiasm and excitement and the feel of a buzz in the air. But reading their reflections gives me the details of what is working for them, what they find useful, how their world is affected by the work we’re doing together.  Some of which I’ll share in the next post. 

But for now, I’m liking looking into the true mirror where the work I’m sharing is” lifting people’s visions, raising their performance, building their personality” one inch higher or larger. 14 years after writing that poem, gravity has continued its tug (of course it will!) but the face in the true mirror is each day more handsome. For that, I am grateful.