All This Staring at Our Faces Is Messing With Our Heads: When we look at ourselves, we are seeking something. We want to be known, seen and understood. But we are looking in the wrong place. The mirror shows us our own self-critical and self-exalting gaze — the gaze of pride, pleasure and ego. This fantasy is powerful, even mesmerizing, but unreliable. When we look solely at ourselves, we fail to encounter anything that resists us; there are no contradictions, no interruptions. We need the honest gaze: the gaze of others and the gaze toward others. To see ourselves clearly, we don’t use mirrors. We use relationships.