Pity this love affair was not confined to mirrors and lakes. But from that day Narcissus first saw his reflection, he began to see everything as it related to his own image. The world was his looking glass. His insatiable appetite for himself took him all over the globe, and he was invariably pleased with what he saw. He left in his path a troubling wake which slipped like a fever through the people who saw him. There is even an West African tribe whose encounter with him led them to create a new verb. The verb means "to look into someone else's eyes and see the reflection of oneself."

The sad truth is that Narcissus was right. When he looked at his image, what he saw was, in fact, perfection. But he was wrong when he attributed it to himself. What he saw was the perfection of humanity, of creation itself; he saw it in himself, and so thought it belonged to him. But it belongs to no one. It is the robe of the spirits, a grand design of bone and blood, of intellect and memory, of beautiful suffering and tragic yet unrelenting hope. These robes are borrowed, and when we return home to the mansion of the souls, we leave them at the door.