This is the untold legend of Narcissiphus.

Sysiphus was of course the Greek man, who spent his life rolling a big stone uphill. When he had almost succeeded the stone always stumbled down and he repeated the effort ad infinitum.

Narcissus was another Greek legend, who admired his image in the reflection of a lake and felt very smug about what he saw.

A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting. Such neurons have been directly observed in primate species (Wikipedia).

When Narcissiphus (licensed by poetry and my imagination) looks up from the bottom of the lake, the mirror (at what surface?) lies in reflection, perspective and metaphore.