Getting Over Yourself by Richard Smigielski

July 6, 2025

Good morning. Despite the current political situation, you’ve been able to celebrate our
country’s founding.
I want to take a moment to discuss mirrors.
A mirror is a surprisingly complex device. Mirrors were so difficult to make that until the
early 1800s, they were both costly and scarce.   Before that, the mirrors that existed
were usually just small pieces of highly polished silver or obsidian. If you owned a
mirror, it was most likely an inch or two in diameter and, at most, provided a mediocre
reflection—only princes, queens, and wealthy financiers could afford them. 
So, before the 1800s, if you were an average person, you rarely, if ever, saw your own
face. You grew up, got married, had children, even grandchildren, and then died, all
without being able to pick yourself out from a crowd. You might never have seen your
chin or had the opportunity to appreciate the color, shape, and beauty of your own eyes.
Ponder that for a moment.
Due to this scarcity of mirrors, to evaluate their appearance, most people relied on the
observations of friends and family.  To determine if you were looking well or ill, sharp or
sloppy, you relied on the opinions of family and friends.  A person’s sense of their
physical self was dependent on their personal and social connections.  You truly saw
yourself through the eyes of others. 
 
In 1961, a young Bob Dylan was immersing himself in the blues of Robert Johnson, the
protest songs of Woody Guthrie, and the cultural chaos of NYC when he stumbled
across a line from a French poet. It read, “I am someone else.” He later wrote that at
that moment, “The bells went off. It made perfect sense.”  It was then that he realized
that the ‘I’ in the songs he was writing had little to do with him.  That a song is not for the
person writing it or playing it, but for the people listening to it.
The songs Dylan was composing were not about himself; they were about and for
someone else. Mr. Tambourine Man is not playing for Bob; he’s playing for someone
miles and even decades away. To this day, Dylan claims that removing himself from his
music freed him to write in an uninhibited way and led to the creation of some of the
most significant music in our lifetimes. 
 
Dylan’s realization has broader implications than just making records. 
He realized something that we all can benefit from understanding: We are a tiny part of
a vast universe, and the thing we call identity, persona, or even ‘I’ can get in the way of
developing the empathy needed to connect with our world and the people in it.  Instead
of starting with ‘I,’ try putting ‘We’ first.
In the end, what is ‘I’ anyway? Any quality, aspect, or trait you believe forms your
identity belongs only partially to you.  The qualities you use to define ‘yourself’ come

from what those around you believe and feel about you. Consider how you think of
yourself, from the trivial to the profound.
Do you think of yourself as:
A great cook?
A good parent?
Wonderful Spouse?
A hard worker?
Or an accomplished felon?
You do not determine if you possess any of those qualities.  These attributes are in the
hands of your friends, family, and neighbors. 
Your dinner guests assess your culinary skills. Your children judge your parenting. Your
life partner, supervisor, and jury decide the rest.  It is our contact with others that makes
us who we are.  It is the interplay between ourselves and those around us that defines
us and gives us meaning and purpose. I suggest we play a smaller part in our lives than
we’d like to believe. 
When I was running a rather popular TV show, I was responsible for shooting, editing,
and dealing with network executives. I had a humongous old-style computer at my desk.
Everything to do with the show was on that machine: notes from the network, lawyers’
memos, schedules, scripts, resumes, budgets, everything. That computer was
indispensable. Two weeks before the launch of a new season, during a routine
computer upgrade, an error occurred, a mistake was made.  And all data on that
computer was lost. Erased. Wiped. Everything. 
This was in the days before iCloud and easy backups.
 
Everything needed to run the show was gone. It felt like someone had died. We didn’t
know what to do.  Then, someone suggested, “What about email”? Looking through the
correspondence, we discovered memos from the lawyers, schedules, the budgets, and
everything else needed to launch the new season.
Nothing essential was lost. Everything of significance was part of an exchange between
me and someone else. It helped me realize it’s not so much what’s inside you that is
important; What is important is what you share with others. What is crucial in life lies not
within ourselves, but between each other.
It lies between you and your children. 
Between you and your partner.
Between you and your dinner guests. 
Identity, persona, or ‘me’ exists not solely within the individual; It is a shared experience.
Our sense of ‘I’ is created through involvement with our family, our loved ones, and our
community.  I want to suggest that if you’re going to improve yourself, have a better life,
and a happier one, throw away the self-help books and start thinking about the

happiness and welfare of others.  Don’t ask, “What’s best for me?” Try asking, “What’s
best for her, him, them, or us?” Try connecting more deeply with others, support them,
and genuinely care for them. Be more about “them” than “me.” Understand what Dylan
did; that the ‘I’ in a song is not him. Or, in the words of Aristotle, it is the action, not the
character, that tells a story.  Or, as my on-the-job experience taught me, what I had on
my indispensable computer was not essential.  It was my communications with thoses
around me was what mattered.
 
Remember:
The story is more important than the characters.
The song is more essential than the singer. 
And this gathering, all of us together, has a greater significance than each one of us had
when we entered this room.
Several years ago, Keanu Reeves was on The Late Show hawking his latest movie,
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure 3. During a conversation about the new movie,
motorcycles, and oddly, the end of the universe, Stephen Colbert playfully asked, “What
do you think happens when we die, Keanu Reeves?”
Reeves let out a long breath and then answered so insightfully and profoundly that it left
the loquacious Stephen Colbert momentarily speechless.
 
Keanu Reeves said,
“When you die, the people who love you will miss you.” 
By not centering on himself, he answered the question through the eyes of the people
who love and hold us dear, and who we love and hold dear. Because of this, he said
something true. 
Concerning death, this is possibly all we can know and even all we need to know.  And
it’s a good reminder that each one of us is just a small part of an unimaginably vast
universe.
While this answer tells us important things about death, it tells us much more
meaningful things about how to live.