Yesterday we were all reunited with my wife’s parents, watching videos of their youth.

Seeing people 10-20 years apart can make a big different. You get too see a visual change, you see them young and then you look at who you know now.

That snapshot in time takes many informations. You see a young girl playing, but more than that you see that playfulness, that will to play, to engage with others, to simply not care.

When we’re young we don’t care. But while we grow up something changes. We sacrifice part of that freedom, we put up a mask, a social mask. Partly because we got burnt many times, partly because we want to avoid getting burned again, and partly because that’s how the world works.

We can instantly see how time changes people. How many layers were put to become who they are now.

At the same time we know that there’s no turning back. Reverting a mask is no easy deal. It takes time, it takes humility and patience. More often than not we changed into something we partially like. What we don’t see is that the mask, or even the armor, we put on, can’t be easily removed. It is now part of who we are. In the new videos this will be our starting point and we can only add more masks to it, we will hardly remove them.

The question is: For what? Why do we do this, why do we care so much about appearance, fame, status when we were happier before?
To protect, to avoid being hurt. What if we took pride in who we are and took that risk, that chance, to simply be authentic, to go and show the world what we have for them, in full resolution and color?

What would happen then?