Probably not, because when you look in the mirror or take a selfie you frame it with everything you already think about yourself. The frame contains the words that stand out from what other people have told you in glowing letters. It contains both the words that have made you secure in your identity and the words that make you doubt who you are. The labels hang off the hooks you've put in the frame - successful, failing, beautiful, ugly, identified by your job, your relationship status, your emotions that day. The frame is self made with input from those around you and the marks it contains affect what you see.
I am quite enjoying taking photos from inside things, from beside things and through things, framing the way the object sees. It changes what you see, helping you to notice different spaces and shapes - shadows and edges that otherwise would not be there. By watching through a frame, it limits what you can see and it affects the way you see the objects that are in focus.
We can choose to frame anything - not through a hole in a fence but through our thoughts and ideas - and we can shift that frame as we see fit - get (in our opinion) the best or worst angle, showing the view in all its glory, or in all its lacking. Journalists do this all the time - the framing of good and bad people and politics is all relative to the writer's own choice of positioning.
When we frame others through the lens of our own ideas and experience, it changes the way we behave towards them and treat them. If we see someone as good or the same as us, we shift our frames to a place that remind us to listen to their story. What they say and do influences how we react. If we see someone as bad, in the same way, we shift our frames to a place that reminds us to be hostile or to walk away.
The person who might have rubbed you up on the wrong way once is forever someone to be cautious of.
The person who challenged you once on something you did is always someone whose behaviour you'll watch - just wait until they put a step wrong.
The person who has a different view point to you is always, in your frame, up for an argument.
The person from a different political party to you is always wrong, because that's what the frame says.
The person who dresses or looks funny is to be avoided just in case you become like them.
The person who has a different social status to you is someone to be helped but not someone who can help you.
The person you disagree with will be forever wrong, your frame only contains your right interpretation.
The person who you are speaking for doesn't need to speak because you are more articulate than they are.
The person who travelled across the sea in a dinghy is not a person like you and me, let us send them back across the sea, or fly them to a country they do not know and do not want to go to.
The person in the mirror who struggles to find their way.
How about if we consciously shift our frames?
How about we shift our frames from a place of fear and control to a place of embrace?
How about we shift our frames to see people as human first - made in the image of God, with beauty and potential for good. How about we see that people have the ability to change, surprise, bring joy.... be loved. How about we see possibilities rather than problem first, love rather than hatred, cooperation instead of animosity, promise instead of threat, blessing instead of condemnation....
Before our frame is fixed in a place of judgment, let us listen, let us wait, let us pause and take time to breathe. There is far more to who is in front of us than the labels we use to position the frame through which we see.
A prayer based on Psalm 139:23-24.....
"Search me oh God and know my heart (help me to see people as you do); test me and know my anxious thoughts (show me where my frame needs shifting). See if there is any offensive way in me (help me to not be so rigid that I don't see people's potential), and lead me in the way everlasting (with a community full of human beauty that includes those that my own prejudices and ideas try to cut out of the frame)."
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