It's interesting how we revere people in whom we see much of ourselves. And how curious it is to note how often we project our own traits onto people whom we admire.

Just as an example, have you ever noticed how many different ethnicities Jesus is depicted as being? In one painting he's portrayed as a white man with blue eyes and in another he's black with an afro. His image keeps changing to suit different cultures. Also--and this is a bit embarrassing--I used to be a great fan of Shania Twain. I enjoyed her music, but I think I idolized (for want of a better word) her because I identified with her. I, at the time, was extremely self-conscious and I found out that she had had similar feelings when she was young, and look at her now: an extremely successful and seemingly functional woman. Something I had aspired to be.

I'd guess it's closely tied to psychology of how we interact with our fellow human beings in every day life. I'm not entirely sure how to convey this, but it seems to me we judge other people and their actions by the only point of reference we have: ourselves. I've observed that one can, on occaision, tell a lot about a person by the way they percieve the actions of those around them. For instance, there's one excessively absent student at my school who is always the first to assume that someone else is playing hooky.

Anyway, enough of my ramblings. That's just been rolling around in my head for a while. I blame it all on this passage in the preface of Sam Schoenbaum's book Shakespeare's Lives:

Desmond McCarthy had said somewhere that trying to work out Shakespeare's personality was like looking at a very dark glazed picture in the National Portrait Gallery: at first you see nothing, then you begin to recognize features, and then you realize that they are your own.

Right. So. I'm going to go somewhere and stop think--Oooo, shiney. . .