One afternoon as I was walking down the hallway in our home, I could hear loud music coming from the kid’s bathroom. To be quite honest, I was a little irritated by the volume of the music so I opened the bathroom door to address the issue. When I leaned inside, my first glimpse was the image of Ryan and his friend Jesse in the bathroom mirror. The reflection revealed both of them facing the mirror and using hair brush handles as microphones while they sang along to Michael Jackson’s song “Man In the Mirror”. From the top of their lungs they sang “I’m looking at the man in the mirror. I’m asking him to change his ways. No message could’ve been any clearer. If you wanna change the world, take a look at yourself and make that change.” I told them to turn the music down a bit but Ryan, without any obvious signs of disrespect, glanced over at me with a twinkling in his beautiful hazel eyes and a crooked mischievous grin, proceeded to turn the music up while singing even louder! It was a sweet beautiful moment, and though I didn’t fully realize it at the time, Ryan was teaching me in that moment.
Change cannot happen until it starts within us. It’s when we look at the man in mirror we can make a decision to change our life.
“To create does not always mean to build, but rather to chip away from ourselves.” – Ryan White