You know how celebrities have whole teams of people in charge of PR? Or at least one agent, (it probably depends on just how big a deal they are,) you likely also know that these people are said to be in charge of the image of the star.

Or if some celebrity is getting a bad rap, they need to work on their image.

That’s the idea I want you to keep in mind.

What about us ordinary people? Don’t we worry about our image also?

We just don’t call it that. But we all think about how people see us. It’s like some pop songs say “The world is watching you” and we all feel like that sometimes.

Or maybe we feel invisible.

I think I tend to feel more invisible. I’ve been that person that nobody really talks to, or just waves or says a superficial hello to, but no one is really interested in my company.

I actually have a friend now who just became my friend pretty much because they actually liked talking to me, which shocked me considerably.

Not that people don’t say I’m interesting but you get the idea.

I know that I’m not the only one, I’d say at least 50% of humanity feels ignored a lot of the time, event he ones in the spotlight at their job, or in their family, or in the eyes of the world, when they aren’t performing, they feel ignored. That’s why a lot of people perform, it’s too get attention.

How does attention effect our image? Image is all about what kind of attention we get. Negative attention means a bad image, positive means a good, and no attention means…bad pretty much. Who likes being ignored?

Maybe those who have learned to like it as a means of self defense.

There are those souls who just seem self sufficient. You probably know one or two, or you are one, they seem happy by themselves. They’re introverts. They could go on singing their merry song without interruptions.

But I guarantee that even those people blossom out when someone takes a special interest in them.

How much of what we think of people is based on what we see of them? Tabloids rely on photos to influence our perceptions of people, commercials rely on images to affect our emotions, we post pictures of ourselves to give the impression that we are having a good life. OR maybe to plead for sympathy. It depends.

There’s that saying that no man is an island after all. We don’t want to feel like Robinson Caruso in our lives.

People are deeply lonely, that may be one of the defining characteristics of humanity. even career women and successful men who love their jobs feel lonely.

Often our success is just our way to compensate to ourselves for our personal pain. WE decide that if we can’t have what we really crave, hen we’ll at least have an impact in another area.

It’s been observed by others that we all wear masks, that we hide our true self.

But even if we were true to ourselves, I think the loneliness would remain.

I mentioned in a recent post how pain and suffering can make me feel lonely. My dad is getting over a bad cold, and he said the same thing about getting lonely just lying around being sick.

But I think human pain itself makes us lonely. I think knowing how much other people are capable of hurting us makes us lonely, we have trouble trusting them.

IT’s terrible to not be able to trust, it makes us insecure.

You’ll find pretty much all your issues can be traced back to someone breaking your trust at one point, or you breaking your own trust. I know all my issues do back to those two things.

How does that effect your self-image?

Here’s where we get to the part where all this comes together.

A celebrity’s obsession with their image to the public is just a manifestation of their obsession with self-image. They only get to parade it around for the rest of us. Get to? More like we make them do it. Society can be cruel to its idols.

But is there a way to stop this? Can we ever cease to be lonely? Can we get over our mistrust?

Well, the world’s answer is no. You can manage your junk, but you can’t get rid of it.

The religious answer is that you can get rid of it someday if you do the right things now.

The Christian answer is the only one I know of that gives three different answers that don’t contradict each other.

The Christian answer is first of all that we need to realize our image is supposed to be reflecting God. Genesis 1 says we are made in His image and likeness.

This means that we are literally God-like.

But obviously our image has been screwed up.

The second thing we need to do is recognize that in this life, we’ll never be perfect. SO in a way the world is right, our junk does stay with us all our life.

But, and that’s a big but, thirdly, we know that there is a next life.

It’s actually part of Christian doctrine to believe that heaven effects earth even now. In other worlds, our eternal life bleeds into our mortal life.

Our junk, our pain, and our sin, they happened. Nothing changes that. But Jesus can take those things and transform them. Use all of them to drive us to him, and to redemption, instead of separation. The more we embrace that, the more our eternal life impacts our here and now.

In a sense, our junk is removed even before we really feel different.

Our image can change.

Personally, I think it’s a relief to not have to worry about my image anymore. I do get hurt still, but I have a way to bounce back.

That’s all for now, until next time–Natasha.