Sometimes when we look at ourselves it’s like looking at a family picture. All the people, all the characters that we are and that we have been are like familiar faces that come from the same stem. Even the characters that we could have been are there – though they tend to be more aloof, and their faces might be blurred in the photo.
You can almost imagine them all, having Christmas lunch perhaps – a fire crackling in the fireplace, the turkey finishing cooking in the oven, snow falling outside, all those ourselves sitting and chatting at the table.
They chat about the present, the past and the future. Some of them know more than the others do, some of them judge the others in disgust, some of them are just glad to be there.
You will recognise these people: they are the insecure teenager on their way to discovering life, the determined cousin that just went for it and now lives in America and has a big house and a fast car, the selfish brother that doesn’t give a crap, the fat uncle that drinks too much and ends up upsetting granny towards the end of the meal, the generous hearted father that keeps the family together. In my case they might all have big ears and eyebrows in common.
We spend a lot of our time in life being those people, sometimes trying not to be them, but in a way or another – just like in a family – we are all related. And we all recognise each other, we know where we come from, even if nobody else in the world does.
Each of us has an innate potential to be many things at the same time and the way we deal with this perhaps holds some special meaning. The person we are now might be tempted to judge what we were yesterday, looking at those people as imperfect, as not actualised yet.
However, I think that feeling ‘comfortable in our own skin’ means going to that Christmas lunch and appreciate all the people that are there. They might not all be exactly our type of people (‘what is he wearing?’, ‘Gee how rude!’) – Nonetheless we like them, we even love them, because they are us, because they come from us. We know their history and crave to know their future.
