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Mirror Mirror

Reflection caged in a glass

Almost every kid meets the underrated day wherein he finds himself staring at a mirror, watching his reflection mimic every single action he performs.
I am an adult, yet I too found myself staring at the mirror. What could have made an adult like me get that curious wonder at a mirror that we ought to normally leave behind at childhood? Hang tight, read on, you would find out soon enough.
Well, while I gazed on the ever shinny mirror, though this story is fictional, it embraced my mind like a sour memory. It is the story of two friends who though down and out, kept receiving a pounding from life's pitiless knuckles.
Okiemute just received a sack letter from the job he had no option but to do, his friend Emu had just received a divorce letter from the woman he had no other option but to love because she was the only one who had ever given him open arms (only that has changed).
Each friend beaten by depression had no time to look a mirror, else they would see their neglected chins embraced by unkempt beards.
Sharing a similar burden, one fated dusk they hang out in a rickety bar. They spoke, each man forgetting his troubles for the moment as he tried to cheer his friend up. They took more gin, got drunk to the core. So they went until it was time to go home.
Each man rolled into his car. Drunk, gin took over both steering wheels. Emu rammed a tree trunk, so did Okiemute.
In no time, the police arrived the scene. They discovered each man rammed a tree trunk albeit a child was at the front of the tree trunk Emu rammed.
They are soon before a judge. One man is slammed with a fine for drunk-driving, the other man is sentenced to life imprisonment.
How is that remotely fair? Both men performed exactly the same actions, each action stirred by exactly the same thing (Depression). Why then do they face different sentences? It is the frailty of the human mind at fault, and it has infected the law of the land because the law of the land is product of the infected mind.
The human mind passes it's judgements daily not based on causes but based on effects, forgetting that the effects are not actions, the causes are. Cause and effect is the natural progression. Both men had a similar cause of the accident (similar actions) but both men had different consequences (death of a child present in Emu's case).
The natural human mind judges a person not based on the actions he performed. The natural human mind judges based on consequences yet forgets that consequences are not actions.
Certainly as expected, Okiemute visited Emu's prison cell. Still unable to look at his mirror, his beards were as unkempt as ever. As he watched his friend behind bars, he wondered why it was his friend caged behind bars though they performed the same exact actions?
Well, that day I revisited childhood, while I mused at my mirror, I realized that in visiting Emu, Okiemute finally looked at a mirror for the first time in a long while. Emu was his very own reflection because like every reflection, it does the same actions as us but at the end of the day, it is the one caged in a glass.
If my reflection and I do the same exact things, why is my reflection caged in a glass? That is nature teaching us about the frailty of the human justice system.

If you were inspired by the inspirational moral story, if you agree or disagree with the conclusions I came up with, you are welcome to telling me by dropping a comment below.

Picture courtesy Pixabay