Be (someone) different
My favourite fantasy as a child was to be someone other than who I am. I could fantasise for hours about waking up one morning as a professional footballer, an archaeologist, a secret agent or at least as the broad-shouldered Jens from my parallel class. What do you mean by imagining, in those moments I was a secret agent. I did it with an intensity and seriousness that I never achieved again in my real life. My dreams were always more real than my reality. But what do you do about this basic feeling of puberty?
The temptation to swap one's life for another is not only tempting for adolescents.
No one has answered this question more radically and conclusively than Patricia Highsmith: in her legendary novel «The Talented Mr Ripley», one person (Tom Ripley) murders another (Dick Greenleaf) and assumes their identity. The motive for this deed is never revealed, or more precisely, does not have to be revealed, because who does not know the feeling that nothing is worse than being oneself? and so Tom Ripley slips into the shoes of someone else on behalf of all the misunderstood, unfinished and searching - because what does he have to lose except his own story?
Hasn't everyone ever imagined what it would be like to start their life all over again as a different person? You can retake exams, so why not whole lives? Why do we have to live a lifetime with (bad) decisions that we made a long time ago? In short, why are we not allowed to run away from our own lives? Mafia bosses who are acquitted under the leniency programme are allowed to start a new life under a witness protection programme.
There is no new start, just a trial and error and, if we are lucky, a coming to terms with who we are.
Where are the witness protection programmes for ordinary people who simply want to escape from their boring lives? Where are the witness protection programmes for anyone who has incriminating information about themselves? Of course, you have to be careful, because we can't get rid of the person we least want to be there: ourselves. Another great writer has disproved Highsmith's fantasy, if you like: Truman Capote. In «Breakfast at Tiffany's», Holly Golightly, perhaps the most famous of all identity changers, lies in the arms of her lover.
He says: Wherever you go, whatever you call yourself, your cage will always be the same and you will always be yourself. A love scene that draws its tenderness from the fact that it reveals a piece of truth about life: we are all snails that have to drag our shells, our selves, around with us, no matter where we go. What Truman Capote wants to shout to all adolescents is this: There is no starting over, only trial and error, and, if we're lucky, making friends with who we are.
