As Water Reflects a Face

“As water reflects a face back to a face, so one person’s heart reflects another’s.” Opening “As water reflects a face back to a face, so one person’s heart reflects another’s.” It is a simple verse, and a well-known one. People usually understand it like this: just as water shows you your own face, so it is with the human heart. When you are warm toward your friend, he is warm toward you. It goes both ways. What you give comes back to you. But this verse holds a completely different depth. Because you will surely ask: What happens when I am completely sure that I am right? What about when the fight is burning hot, and the truth, as far as I can see, is as clear as the sun? I see his faults. I see his failures. I see how unbearably he behaves. And I am supposed to say that I am really seeing myself? That is the hard question. That is what we will talk about. A True Story Once a young man came to me. He had been married and was now divorced, and he was ready to marry again. I asked him, “Whose fault was the divorce?” He answered simply, without a moment’s pause: “One hundred percent hers. She was sick, she had a diagnosis, she was impossible.” I told him, “You are not ready for marriage yet. Someone who is always right, and cannot see his own blind spot, will ruin his next marriage too.” Months went by. He came back. Something in him had changed. He had a different energy and a different look in his eyes. He said, “Rabbi, I missed something. I didn’t see the whole picture.” I was not surprised. I have heard many stories like this. People were sure they were completely right. Then something shook them to the core. It was a deep inner jolt that broke their ego, a moment when they truly set the self aside. And what happened then? Not one of them came back and said, “I was right all along.” Not one. Always, always, they came back knowing: “I was wrong. I didn’t see my own part.” And that itself, my friends, is the proof. The Foundation In the Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, its author, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, teaches that we must love every Jew, “because they are all limbs of one body.” But personal bias distorts the way we see. Our sense of self and our selfishness get in the way. When the “I” is big, the “other” looks small and flawed. This is exactly what the verse teaches us: “As water reflects a face back to a face.” The water does not create the face. It only shows it back. What you see in another person is what is inside you. It may not take the same form or come with the same strength. But it is there in a subtle way, deep down, at the root. So when a person sees a fault in his friend, and especially when he is burning with self-righteousness, that does not prove he is right. It is a sign that the water is muddy. His ego is bending the mirror out of shape. Our Sages said: “Whoever finds fault in others is finding his own fault.” This is not just a nice saying. It is a solid truth about the human heart. Something New: The Proof from Real Life We said this is Hasidic teaching, a lovely foundation. But where is the proof that this is really how things are? Here it is. If the way I saw things during the fight were objective, then afterward, once I had sobered up and set my ego aside, I would come back and confirm: “Yes, I was right.” But that never happens. Never. Everyone who has gone through a real setting aside of the self, a deep inner jolt that took him out of himself, has come back and said: “I only saw part of it. My bias blinded me.” This is no accident. It is proof. It proves that the first position, “I am one hundred percent right,” was not a position of truth. It was a position of ego. There was pain. Personal bias colored the whole picture. It is just like the time Nathan the prophet came to King David and told him a parable about a poor man’s only lamb. David burned with anger: “As Hashem lives, the man who did this deserves to die!” And only then did the light break through: “You are the man.” The ego is blind. Only setting the self aside lets us see.