Caricature du jour

Its Monday folks, and its once again time for some thoughts for your week! This week i've dedicated to caricatures- the ones we create of others and of ourselves.

This theme started when i stumbled upon a CV of some one who is campaigning for a seat on a committee this fall. having known this person for quite some time, im pretty abt at telling what her interests are and what her talents are. Under "languages" she listed that she spoke german, english, french and italian. I almost fell off my chair. The only thing the girl knows in french is "merci" and her italian ends somewhere with "espresso" and "pizza frutti di mare". She furthermore listed travel and photography as her hobbies- though i have my doubts about whether you can count the 2 hour drive home as "travel"?! Yet, whos going to contradict her CV? It was then that i started to wonder: When we write things about ourselves how far do we go? Let me be honest with you- i dont really like this girl. Nonetheless, if she had all the talents she lited, id have said nothing. But when people blatently pretend that they ca do things they cant it bothers me. Yet, dont we all do it?

When we write things about ourselves, we tend to exaggerate the positive and tone down the negative. Being good at organizing turns into "planning expert" and restlessness turns into "great motivation". Why do we feel the need to impress people on paper when we know that once they meet us in person, they will likely realize it was bluff? Surely, no one wants to write on their CV "I may be unmotivated at times and between 12 and 3 im not really into hard work" and thats not what im campaigning for. Shouldnt we all be honest with ourselves, first and foremost? Instead of creating these uber images of ourselves, shouldnt we just love the person we are? Worst of all- couldnt we risk loosing ourselves amidst all the images we so carefully create?

Worse than the caricatures we create of ourselves are the caricatures we create of others. They may be people we arent very fond of, they may be our family, they may be our lovers- It continues to baffle me why we insist on making them into something they are not. Shy people thus become "arrogant", funny people become "obscene" and slim people become "anorexic". WHY? Why do we make people into something they aren`t? Maybe its our own securites which force us to find flaws in the people around us to make it more bearable for ourselves. Maybe all we're really trying to do is bring down the people around us because they appear to be doing so much better than ourselves. The grass is always greener on the other side, after all. On the other hand maybe its also envy. We envy the quiet person next to us because we're loud. We envy the funny people because we dont even get the jokes in the morning papers. We envy the skinny ones because for us, standing in front of the mirror is a fight- every day. In order to stop making people into things they're not, we first need to identify why we do so: are we envious or are we simply scared? Are we doing it because we feel of lesser value or because we want what they have?

When we create caricatures of ourselves and of those around us, we ultimately seek to compensate for something. We hide our own insecurities and self-percieved flaws behind images we've build to distract others. The only problem is that these caricatures can fall apart faster than a sandcaslte. If we pretend to be something we're not, it will always come out. It might take years- it may only take a day. At the end of it all, shouldnt we be loved and appreciated for being who we really are and not for something we pretend to be? How can somebody love us if they think we're a spanish opera diva when really we're a music teacher from New Jersey?

We all have strenghts and we all have weaknesses- maybe its time we stopped hiding them and came clean.