Lily Kim


Mirror Mirror in my Mind



Meta-Reflection: Reflecting on My Own Mirror Reflections



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It was one August day in my senior of high school. The sharp voice of an employee at the organic clothes shop cut through my concentration as I was preparing for a fashion show promoting environment-friendly clothes.

“Did somebody hit you on the leg or something?”

Trying to sound calm, I replied, “No, I have atopic eczema.” All eyes in the shop turned to my legs beneath my short summer skirt.


This itchy skin problem has accompanied me since birth, but it was exacerbated in my senior year to a point that I scratched so much and covered my body with numerous scabs. After repeating the same explanation countless times to people curious about my legs, I started wearing long skirts and pants despite the hot, humid weather.

But I still went to the shop. Upon returning home, I sighed with frustration as I pulled off my sweaty pants. I could just stay home, feeling cool with my legs bare…what am I doing?

At that cue, I thought of telling people how fashion trends can change the environment, presenting organic clothes on the runway, and setting up food for the guests. This endless stream of plans washed away the insidious complaints, and I wondered, “Why am I so committed?”

This was the question I’ve heard so often from environmentalists since my first volunteer work a few years ago. They were curious about how I could be so active at such a young age.
I used to convince these people to accept a high school student volunteer, telling them that learning at a young age the negative impact of pollution on my eczema had deepened my interest in environmentalism. Searching for clothes suitable for my skin led me to promote organic T-shirts. Had my eyelids never tingled when I washed my face or had my scalp never prickled when I shampooed my hair, I might not have been as fervent to help people with environmental diseases like mine.

Indeed, what was I doing? How could I cover up the very problem I had encouraged other patients to overcome? I must have momentarily forgotten that, all my life, the scratches behind my knee have been physical reminders of the abused environment.

Such thoughts, along with the guilt from contributing to global warming by turning on the air conditioner thanks to the long pants, brought my summer fashion back from its unprecedented, short-lived exile.

The return of the shorts did not lead to dramatic changes. People at environmental organizations still stole glances at my legs. But I could now see that they were actually more curious about a young lady devoted to a cause.

On the fashion show day, I was wearing my short black skirt for the first time in weeks. One staff member from another organization remarked that the skirt looked nice on me. She must not have noticed the scabs, but had she asked about them, I would have been glad to explain how they brought me here as the youngest participant.

To this day, that memorable summer of my senior year in high school serves as a reminder of how I can overcome my personal difficulties by working for other people with similar problems and by making the effort to bring positive changes to the community that I am a part of.

* * *


Indeed, eczema has been such a big part of life. I never prided in having eczema, but as I illustrated with the incident above, I do credit it for making me get aware of environmental issues early on. I do not mean to say, however, that I am always this positive and grateful for my condition. Eczema did come with its vices; for example, having eczema made me prone to get self-conscious with my looks, especially when I was younger. Occasionally, I would be asked rather blunt questions in elementary school, from “Did you not wash your arm? Why is it darker?” to “Eww, she’s scratching her neck!” That was back in those days when my peers (and I) were developmentally too young to cultivate sensitivity or care whether our curiosity kills hundreds of kittens. But as I grew to learn that my inner qualities are more important than my physical appearances, I was able to downplay others’ comments and develop a healthy dose of self-esteem. I thought I had everything under control.

After coming to Stanford, however, my eczema situation significantly worsened to the point where I was thinking of taking a leave of absence almost every quarter since my sophomore year. Whether it was the new environment, the sunny and dry California weather, or the stress that triggered such an unprecedented exacerbation, my doctors were not able to find out. It was the first time in my life that I felt as if I was fighting a losing battle. Every evening, I was scared that I would have to go to bed early without having finished my assignment due next day because sleep was often the only option left when I could not do anything other than scratch myself to ease the allergic reaction in vain. It was impossible to predict when my symptoms would worsen, and living in a constant uncertainty was bothersome to someone who likes to plan everything ahead. I almost felt deprived compared to our students to know that caffeinated drinks and sunbathing on campus, both of which makes my symptoms worse, are luxuries to me even though rationally, I was perfectly aware of how lucky I am to study in one of the greatest universities in the world. While I was trying to strike a balance among my heavy courseload, extracurricular activities, and health problems, it did not help that I was becoming more self-conscious with my looks.

As much as I hated to admit it, I was once again afraid to look myself in the mirror.

Self-Compassion and Ideas for the Project


When my eczema started to significantly affect my sophomore year at Stanford, I turned to learning more about self-compassion. I soon realized it was not what other people were saying about my condition that was bothering me. In fact, people I have met at Stanford rarely asked about my skin, but when they did, my story was received with utmost empathy and sensitivity. Instead, it was my own imagination of what others might think that made me become more self-conscious and self-critical. I remember one time in my junior year when I was surprised to look myself in the mirror not because I looked horrendous after a rough night of allergy flare-ups but because the rash marks on my eyelids were actually not as bad as I was imagining them to be in my head. Gradually, I began to realize that I needed to be nicer to myself—actually, I should be the one who is the nicest to myself. I was looking for consolations from other people, which I found priceless indeed, but the ultimate comfort and reassurance should have been coming from me.

This personal struggle with self-consciousness and self-judgment, in addition to my growing interest in promoting wellness, sparked the initial idea for my project. As a person who learned the hard way about the importance of remaining compassionate with oneself, I wanted to express this idea artistically. But I also had the science portion of the topic that I wanted to share. I had been fascinated with the idea of mirror neurons ever since I learned about them in a happiness class I took at Stanford. Even though their role in explaining human empathy is still debated among scientists, I thought it would be interesting to introduce the existence of such neurons to my future audience nonetheless. I wanted people to know compassion is not all about those “fuzzy” feelings in our heart—there may be a neurobiological explanation for this shared human sentiment that “techies” will find more appealing.

I actually do not believe in the so-called fuzzy versus techie divide. In fact, I was ultimately convinced to take The Senior Reflection (TSR) in my 22-unit quarter because the course seemed to be making a bold statement against this arbitrary and artificial dichotomy between the sciences and the humanities that is so prevalent on this campus. The English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley believed that destruction is followed by creation, and vice versa. That sounded like something that TSR could let me do.

The Unexpected and the Expectations


Though I was thrilled to embark on my first serious artistic journey, I was soon faced with challenges. Just like when I was afraid of the unpredictability of my skin condition, I was again flustered when I felt that my initial plan for a self-photography project may be falling apart. I was not able to get into the introductory photography class that I was planning to take in Winter Quarter. Though I did not fully appreciate this at the moment, in retrospect, this obstacle served as an effective reality check: plans can go awry, and life is inherently risky. What we often do not see at the moment is that those unforeseen events in life can sometimes bring sweet surprises. Because I was not able to take a photography class and had to drop my initial project idea, I came up with a way to express the same idea through a different medium and incorporate mirror as a material that lends both literal and symbolic presence to my central theme. Because of this unexpected barrier, I was forced to be more creative, which ultimately resulted in a unique kind of visual work that I find quite hard to classify, with mirrors serving as the canvas.

I still remember the day when I nervously presented my progress with this new project in class. I showed the class some photos of my work in which mirrors were spray-painted with neuronal shapes.

Quite unexpectedly (again, another pleasant surprise!), my presentation was followed by overwhelmingly positive responses from my classmates and instructors.

But I do not claim to take the sole credit for handling this crisis without major damages to my progress with the project. Without my mentor and instructors, I would not have been able to overcome the challenges that often seemed insurmountable. Without their relentless support ant reassurance, I would not have been able to muster up the courage I needed to cultivate my artistic and adventurous self for the project.

I was truly grateful for the heartfelt encouragement that I was receiving, but I had a new set of worries; now that I have dealt with unexpected scenarios life threw at me, I felt the need to live up the expectations of the people who have seen my progress. There were three different types of fear that I have encountered throughout the different stages of my working process. At first, it was the fear of starting. Then it was the fear of change. Now, it was the fear of disappointing people—letting people down and failing to live up to their expectations. It was exuberating to try new things with my project but at the same time, it was also exhausting to constantly seek ways to make my work better and to satisfy as many people as possible.

Soon I realized that my tendency to turn to perfectionism was resurfacing. When I was getting trained to serve as Peer Heath Educator, I quickly learned that perfectionists could never be happy because humans are not meant to be perfect. Ever since, I had been actively trying to let go of my perfectionism. When we constantly aim for a goal that is impossible to attain to begin with, we are essentially setting ourselves up for an unhappy life. And here I was, a senior claiming to be a healthy role model in the dorm but still looking for a perfect project that will live up to people’s expectations.

The antidote to my natural tendency towards perfectionism was, unsurprisingly, self-compassion. I did not have to be perfect. I did not have to satisfy every single person with every element in my piece. If I tried my best, then that itself should be enough to pat myself on the back. This did not mean that I was letting myself to be lazy. A lot of people worry that if we are too nice to ourselves, we would be unproductive and unsuccessful. This is an unfortunate misconception. I was still spending a lot of hours working on my project, and I had no intention to produce anything less than a piece of work that represented the best of my abilities. But just by lifting from my shoulder the burden of having to seek approval from every single person who sees my work, which I did not have the capacity to control, I was able to stay self-compassionate.

Though unintended, I turned out to be the main beneficiary of my project, which constantly reminded me of the importance of—and the accessibility of—self-kindness.

Why Compassion?


Despite all these struggles and frustrations, I did not give up on my project after all. Of course, there were a few times over the course of three quarters in which I felt that I just could not do it anymore. Yet that transient feeling was still not enough to make me abandon my wish to explore and share through art and science the idea of compassion, which had been my guiding light of life ever since my high school days I spent struggling to find the meaning of service.

n fact, service has been a part of my life for a long time. But as a high school student, I would often wonder whether my motivation to do good was rather arrogant—to think that somebody needs my help and to think that I can make a positive change. It was learning about the true meaning of compassion that has saved me from this dilemma. Service, if a true one that is, did not out of condescending pity or vanity. It came out of compassion.

The route to finding an answer to my question was rather accidental. I picked up The Art of Happiness by His Holiness Dalai Lama that my dad was reading one day in my senior year of high school. At that time, I was nervously waiting for the college admission results to come out, but through that book, I gained so much inner peace that I felt like I was able to accept any result. I realized that the life that I want to live—a life through which I can serve to my fullest—does not depend on which school I go to. It is the inside that I need to cultivate in order to maximize my impact on the world outside. That peace came from learning about compassion in that book. Compassion, according to the book, is “a mental attitude based on a wish for others to be free of their suffering, and is associated with a sense of commitment, responsibility, and respect towards others” (The Art of Happiness, p. 91). That precisely summed up how I felt toward helping others and why I was committed to continue doing some kind of service. As long as I develop my compassion for others, I felt like external factors of life, such as fame or money, did not have to matter as much since I would always have a great force with which I can embrace other people.

Bertrand Russell wrote, “The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life...[I]f you are happy you will be good.” I want to be a happy person who can, with all her heart, embrace a daring life of service with humility and compassionate love for people. Then, I will have lived a good life. The tumultuous journey I took with this TSR project was indeed a part of that good life.

The Final Plea


I would like to end this reflection with a letter to my fellow graduating seniors (and myself):

“People try to get a-head, but I already have one.”

I give credit a sophomore stand-up comedian who lives in the dorm that I am staffing in, for coming up with this brilliant joke.

Not only did I find this joke hilarious but the more I think about it, the more I discover the deep meaning behind it. Why do we relentlessly try to get ahead when we might actually have everything we need—including, the most important of all, a head?

Speaking of heads, Stanford students have the brightest minds. But Stanford still boasts its laid-back and collaborative campus culture. Here, the competition is within and not without.

When Stanford students try to get “ahead,” it is more to overcome a challenge set by themselves rather than to be beat others. In other words, we are self-motivated. But it is concerning that in this process of trying to make ourselves more successful, we push ourselves with inhumanely busy schedules, beat ourselves up against small mistakes that we can easily forgive others of, and wage a war against someone who should be our best friend—our own selves.

As a residential Peer Health Educator, I have encountered many people who were not giving the same love that they were giving to others. They would blame themselves for falling for an abusive relationship, worry about disappointing others with their unsatisfying exam grade, and feel guilty for failing to protect their friends from getting assaulted. Trying to help these residents realize that they are not to be criticized for many of the sufferings they were experiencing, I often felt helpless. All I could do was to listen, I thought. But in fact, that was the best thing to do because people already have the answer. Many of us know how to comfort other people; we just not as used to saying the same caring words to ourselves, misled by our inner critics.

Though Stanford students tend to be harsh on themselves, they are also people with the warmest hearts. We deeply care about protecting the environment—as suggested by the compost bins spread across the campus—to volunteering as the large number of student organizations testifies.

Science supports that we are by nature giving creatures. If it is in our genes to be compassionate, why exclude ourselves? When my residents were able to extend their loving nature to themselves, they could beautifully bounce back from tough times with resilience.

Some days in our lives, we will experience disappointment, loss, and grief. But I hope that you will be your own friend as these challenges await us just as you have been a great friend to me and to so many others on this campus. You probably have no idea that you have touched many people with your kind smile, encouraging words, and warm hands.

My talented friends, I do not have anything left to say other than to remind you that you are enough—more than enough.