The Ragtag Daily Prompt this morning is EGGS. So I’ll post this little collection:
Quote from the poem “To a Louse” by Robert Burns
For those of you not familiar with “To a Louse,” Bobby Burns was sitting in church one Sunday morning taking note of the fine Jeanie sitting ahead of him. She was dressed to the nines, with fancy gown and lovely Sunday-best hat and putting on airs like quite the elegant lady. But then Bobby noticed a tiny louse crawling along the edge of her hat brim. Wouldn’t she be mortified to know that, for all her pride in dressing to the nines, folks behind her could see she had lice in her hair? If she only knew what others were seeing! And how dare this ugly little beast reveal the flaw! So the poet concludes in his last line, “If we could see ourselves as others see us, it would from many a blunder free us, and foolish notion.”
So do others see me as a good egg, hard-boiled, usually scrambled, or even seriously cracked? Hmm…maybe I’d best not know? What do you think: would it be “a gift” to get a glimpse of ourselves through others’ eyes now and then? Or would we be apt to think, “Well, that’s just their opinion/attitude.”
Christine's Collection 
It may humble us to see ourselves through the eyes of others.
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A good thing, I suppose, since pride/vanity is usually an ugly thing. There are times, walking behind someone, when I wish they could get the rear view. They might modify their way of dressing. 😉
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lol!
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I guess we never know how people see us, even mirrors lie and turn us back to front.
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True. Sometimes getting to know people can totally change our view of them — and their view of us! “Loose lips sink ships” in more ways than one. 😉
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I know one thing about the way others see us. It’s almost always at least a 50% projection of themselves and their expectations. At this point, in this place, I wish I could go back to NOT knowing so much about the people who live around me and I KNOW how they see me and they are, of course, wrong. All based on the two important points that 1) I came here from California, therefore, 2) I’m a political liberal who is against gun ownership, is a vegetarian and a communist. 😀
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Thanks for commenting. Your first statement is very true. How they feel about themselves; how they think you feel about them. Some times, as Bobby Burns mentioned, a far look might help us. Often, looking back, we can see & judge our own action more clearly.
As to your second thought, that’s purely stereo-typing someone. California does have a reputation — mainly because the extremes hit the news — and I guess folks from there get tarred with that brush. Like Canadians all own dogsleds. And Brits love their pets more than their children, 🙂
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Yep. Stereotyping is easier than engaging with actual real live breathing people, eh? 😉
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I love the poem and the story behind it. But no, somehow I doubt that seeing ourselves through someone else’s eye would be a good thing.
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There are times when a friend can step up and tell us we’re going off the deep end here, or we should let this issue/these feelings go. They can see we’re getting too wound up and it’s going to drag us down.
Generally, wondering how everybody sees you can lead to paranoia. I’m sure you’ve seen this, too. We’ve a friend who used to think everybody hates him. A look, a comment…yep, that proves it. Thankfully paranoia does ease up in senior years and his isn’t as bad now.
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Agreed. I’m convinced that what we call “low self-esteem” is really about the fact that we don’t think OTHERS think as well of us as they should!
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Thanks for your comments. Low self esteem tend to be a mirror of sorts: we feel like a loser and we think others see us in the same light.
On the other hand, I’ve seen people do things — small quirks, habits — or say things — that look/sound rather ugly. Then I realize that I tend to do/say that same thing on occasion. 😦
In fact, that’s how writers bring it home to us readers that we should change. Stories can be a mirror, too. Hearing Ebeneezer Scrooge scorning the poor made a lot of folks in England rethink their own attitudes.
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