At 40, I am convinced that we cosplay as adult characters to hide our inner child, mostly from ourselves. Some seem to allow the stresses of life and responsibilities to make the mask indistinguishable, but I doubt any truly make it real. Do you wear the mask of age over the eyes of your inner child? Does age hold a meaningful value to you beyond the comradery of shared experience?
I love all the pleasantly deep answers in this thread.
For my input: I’m everything I ever was, all at once.
You know how lenses refract over each other at the optometrist? Or how colors combine when you stack transparent cups in the washer? That’s me. I have parts from everyone I ever met, and parts from everyone I ever was. There’s no mask, even if I focus on one part of the mosaic in a meeting vs. another when I nerd out w/ a buddy – it’s all equally me.
I’m not Shrek though. Onions have layers, but I’m prismatic glass, chips and dips and all.