Holding up the mirror

First published in the Wakefield Daily Item, July 8, 2025.

Every morning, Harry, our handsome pandemic rescue mut, rouses me around 5:30am. I sit up on the edge of the bed in the dark, the gentle whisper of my wife’s breathing behind me, slip into slippers and make my way downstairs to feed Harry and Cali, our nine-year-old Golden. While they’re eating, I shuffle into our front hall bathroom to brush my teeth. I flip on the light and regard myself.

We all wake up each day and look in the mirror. We check ourselves. Sometimes we might notice something new: a wrinkle or freckle; a bit more bulge around the waistline, slightly sharper tricep definition if we’ve been working out. If you’re a geezer like me, maybe your teeth seem a little duller from the daily coffee, or wait, is that a faint age spot emerging? Most days it’s just a simple acknowledgment of who we see: Yeah, that’s me.

In my last letter, I briefly drew a parallel between Trump and his recent actions, and Hitler. Not surprisingly this got a reaction, including from the Wakefield Daily Item’s reporter and columnist, Mark Sardella, who ridiculed the idea in his own subsequent piece. As usual, after his column ran in the Item, he posted it in a Wakefield Facebook group (I do the same), and he got a pretty good mix of Likes and hearts and lots of comments from his usual fans and critics.

Responding to one reader’s praise, Mark remarked: “All I can do is hold a mirror up.”

I had to give this a Like. I use the same metaphor in describing to others my approach to writing. But how could Mark and I, whose views are opposed on so many issues, both be holding up a mirror? Shouldn’t a true mirror accurately reflect reality no matter who is holding it up?

Hmm. Theoretically, maybe. But the reality is we all have different perspectives and no one can be completely objective. In this case the metaphor itself points to the key insight: the reason one holds up a mirror, or looks into one, is to reveal the truth.

Intention matters, and I actually wrote that earlier piece not to virtue signal or out of a feeling of superiority, as Mark seemed to think, but with the honest aim of highlighting, in these uniquely challenging times, what we have in common and that we’re all in this together as Wakefieldians and Americans.

I get the feeling Mark’s purpose in writing his response was different. He wanted to prove me wrong, to win an argument. That’s okay, he’s allowed. It’s a free country. Maybe you believed him.

Why do we look in the mirror? When we get that first gander at ourselves in the a.m., sometimes it can be tough to take. But we look anyway because in some small quotidian way, we’re seeking the truth about ourselves. If we see an issue – a tiny smear of toothpaste in our hair, 2-day stubble on our cheeks, a cankersore brewing, or perhaps something more worrying – we can then take appropriate action. In that initial impulse to see ourselves truly, we all know, at some level, that we can’t just see what we want to see and deny what the mirror is telling us. (Though, god knows, some of us try.)

This also applies more broadly. After all, it's not just ourselves we have to look at and deal with in this world – there are other people here with us. For this, what we need is a collective mirror. It’s not so hard to imagine. Picture you and your spouse or significant other looking into the bathroom mirror together, or you and your family all checking yourselves out in a floor-to-ceiling mirror in a hotel lobby. Sure, we all may see the reflection a little differently, but on the basic picture, we agree – it’s us.

Now, picture the whole country looking in the mirror. Of course we’re going to have different perspectives and opinions – it would be weird if we didn’t. But can we agree on some basics of who we are and what we believe in? In order for us to be one country, and to have a chance at making any progress at all in solving the huge challenges that face us, we need to have shared truth – we need to be able to look in the collective mirror and agree on enough, so that we can all say, “Yeah, that’s us,” and we can all look at each other, nod our heads and say, “I guess we better do something about that painful lump, huh?” or “Whew, it sure is getting hot in here isn’t it?”

The media is a kind of mirror. It shows us a picture of the world and we use our judgment in deciding how accurate and trustworthy it is and how to respond. Back in the 1960s, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite held the mirror up for the country every night, announcing the day’s headlines and providing an outline of basic facts about what was going on in the world. While people might have had different opinions about the various news items and what to do about them, everyone trusted that the basic facts were true. Can you imagine back in 1969, Cronkite reporting on CBS about the moon landing as a triumph for NASA and the country, and then flipping over to NBC to see David Brinkley ridiculing the whole thing as tech fakery and government conspiracy? This is where we’re at now – just watch a little MSNBC or PBS, then flip over to Fox News.

Historians and scientists also hold the mirror up. The countless respected historians who have researched and written about the horrors of the centuries-long American slave trade and its profound impact on our country don’t do this because they hate the USA. The 97% of climate scientists who agree that climate change is real and primarily caused by human activities (such as the burning of fossil fuels) don’t do this because they’re woke libs who hate capitalism.

These people are seeking to tell us the truth about ourselves and our world. The fact that so many of us, rather than reckoning with these difficult truths, seek to just flip to a different channel – one that tells us the story we want to hear – doesn’t change the difficult truths themselves. But it does reflect on us and on our character. When you see something troubling in the mirror, you can’t just deny it and look for another mirror. What kind of people do that?

The collective mirror also reflects on our leaders. Some leaders, when they are faced with facts they don’t like, simply call it “fake news.” (Donald Trump cracked our national mirror, perhaps irreparably, when he began to apply this term to the mainstream media – and anyone else who disagreed with him – in 2016.) True leaders are ones who acknowledge hard facts and difficult truths, and then work to help people come to grips with reality and move forward to make positive change. Real leaders know that progress is impossible without first looking in the mirror and acknowledging our shared truth. Think of Abraham Lincoln (slavery), or FDR (the Great Depression), or MLK (civil rights). As James Baldwin memorably put it: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Of course, not all truth is difficult. People forget, in our increasingly warlike present, that looking in the mirror can also replenish our souls, revealing the beauty and humanity in life, evoking empathy for what others are going through, inspiring us with what we have in common, what we share as humans during our limited time here on earth.

It’s up to each one of us to be honest with ourselves when we look in the mirror every day. And it’s up to all of us – especially our leaders – to focus on our shared truths so that we can face and overcome our challenges together, and move towards a future of possibilities.

© Jeff Kehoe