who are you?

How much...do you really know... about the ones you love?


How much can we REALLY claim to know...about anyone?


For that matter, while we're on the subject, look in the mirror.


No, really look. Deeper. Rest your palms flat on the countertop, take a deep breath, hold it, and lean in.


Nearly touch your nose to the glass, but not quite.


Gaze into your reflected eyes, and REALLY take a good, long, hard look at the person staring back at you.


Drink in the one before you and look again to your eyes.


What things do you find yourself realizing about the thoughts and emotions swimming just inside those eyes?


Who is the person looking back at you? Is it the person you are all day, everyday as you wander this world, or is it the person you hide away in privacy-- unwilling to bring them into the sunlight?


Perhaps you fear that no one will accept this thing you hide-- this person that you are.


But why are you afraid? Why indeed. And why should you feel the need to be so? What would happen, if you shed your skin, stepped out of your facade like a tattered terrycloth robe, and let it all fall away, leaving you naked and terrified and new before this world, your eyes shut tight as you wait for what could perhaps be horror, or worse-- laughter and mockery.


Now, in this-- the moment of your realization of self-- think on what you have done to get here. Do you admit that you have lost yourself in the past, falling in with the crowd when you could have dared to be different, because you weren't sure that different had much of a good ring to it?


When you risk nothing, what can you ever hope to really gain?


What indeed.


Who are you? Ask yourself this question, and mean it as you gaze into your own reflected eyes. Say it aloud, feel the power of those three small words.


Who.. are.. you?


What words come to your mind at that moment, what feelings bubble up from the darkest depths of your deepest soul?


Are you what you have allowed yourself to be all your life? Or have you denied yourself things that you feel you didn't deserve, because someone said you weren't ever really good enough or weren't pretty enough or young or old or smart enough?


Forget them in this, your rebirth. Forget them, and shut them all out.


Your life is not theirs. Your life, your heart, your soul-- these things are all in your keeping alone.


And you-- in all your glory, in all your splendor-- YOU.... are... beautiful. Not perfect-- oh no, no never that, thank heavens. Who wants perfect, when flaws can make you so much more YOU?


But nonetheless, you ... are beautiful. You are unique. In all the ages of the world, in all the years and all the movement of all the planets in the universe.... for all time: there will NEVER be another you.


No one will ever see the world as you see it; no one will ever feel anything the way that you feel it.


That's quite an amazing thought, isn't it-- for you to gaze into the mirror at such a rare thing, such a uniquely beautiful and fragile thing... as you are, and to see yourself gazing out.


So, who are you? Who are you, to dare to be yourself in this world, where fitting in is such an acceptable thing?


The question should never be this.


The question SHOULD be,


who are you, who dare NOT to be?