Real Unreal...Its all the same!

Stand in front of the mirror and observe who looks back at you. The eyes that stare might seem familiar but you won’t be able to guess who the person in the mirror image is. They have taught me to believe that it’s ME but I know for sure it isn’t. It’s my mom at times, or my boss or the guy whose dead body they were showing in the news today. Someone or the other tries to talk to me from that transparent glass. Have you ever felt like this? Or did it ever occur to you that most of the time you are not yourself. You are someone else striving to be the one you’ve always wanted to be. I look around, observe people and pick traits from them. I start behaving in a particular manner, my accent changes, I develop a style that was unknown to me a few months back and then I take pride in being myself. It’s weird, isn’t it?
The question of who is real and who is unreal has been taking various forms in my brain. With the habit of classifying things into categories anything that is confusing bothers me. Am I real? Or am I the unreal one who picks attributes from humans around me and pretend to be real? Can I change things? Or do the things that change convince me that whatever happened is what should have happened? I, like a fool, simply take pride in it. I live several lives, I experience perspectives and what becomes of this mixture is “ME”. Everyone for that matter is made of many different pieces of various identities put together. I am my neighbor at times, I speak like my dad often, my colleague says I resemble an actress he’s seen, my friends friend says I remind him of his girlfriend. With so many personalities dissolved in me I walk out every day to gulp some more.
When I look at it wearing the glasses of optimism I realize this could be a blessing in disguise. As a kid I used to say “I want to be a Prime Minister” or “I want to be a Police Officer”. Life fulfills all our desires in bits and pieces. Though we feel that we are imagining things why do we forget that we are “living” in this imagination? Even if for a little while I am what I wish to be. And if imagination does not make sense then nothing should. I write because it gives me the freedom to be what I wish to be. Some sing, some dance, some paint and this is when they are themselves in the truest sense. What a discovery! You are yourself when you are amidst an artistic journey. A journey that lets you be whoever you wish to be.
Enough of watching those birds fly high. Open those two magic wings of imagination & take a leap in the sky that’s chosen by no-one but you.