Someone I had never met was waving at me. I waved back, it would have seemed rude not to. As I approached though, she realised her mistake and sheepishly explained that she had thought I was someone else.
At least this woman did realise her error. Unfortunately, most of us are going through life without realising that we are mistaking someone’s identity – our own! Without even being aware of what we are doing, we create an identity for ourself, through our identification with a culture, race, language, nation, profession, sex and sexual orientation, name, home and so on. But it is a mistaken identity. That is not who we are.
I hope that one day we will all see our mistake and, like the woman today, say to ourselves with some embarrassment, “Oh, I thought I was someone else!”
