Friends as Mirrors

The other night, I was sitting at an outdoor cafe with some friends, and one of my friends had her feet up resting on the firepit while she balanced on the back two legs of the chair. I told her how scared it made me feel to see her balancing like that. It scared me because I would be scared and uncomfortable in that precarious balancing act. She pointed out, very wisely, that I project my own balance issues on to others. What I had thought of as a maternal instinct, "Put your feet back on those pedals! They're there for a reason!", or the instincts of a teacher, (my grandma was a teacher, my mom was a teacher, and I have been a teacher at various times in my life), "Stop squirming and sit on your bottom!", was really the result of putting myself in others' shoes and feeling scared for them when they didn't see the obvious (to me) danger, stupidity, and foolishness of their actions. I have been driven to distraction-almost to tears-at the sight of a friend standing on a cliff to get a picture. (You know who you are.)