Growing up, I never quite understood the allure of celebrities. I knew of them, of course, and enjoyed their works, but I didn’t understand why people clung to everything they did or didn’t do or say. I never had a “favorite” or was never a fan of any of them. I didn’t have their posters or photos or whatever. I didn’t go to their concerts or movies just because I was a fan. Perhaps because I kinda grew up around them, that I always knew fame/etc. was just a game and illusion? But as I became much older, I now understand a bit more. Some of them are reflections of who we are/were, want/wanted to be, or have become.

There is this actor who is just a few years older than I. I’ve watched his works for a while now. Now, seeing his earlier works again, I saw how young and green and messy he was, but utterly how much potential and talent he had, too. I’ve seen his rise(s) and fall(s). I have seen the blazing light he cast and yet also the charred remnants of his destruction. Watching his early works now, I suddenly realized I was his age. That 20-something him was like the 20-something me. I saw my own awkwardness, growing pains, tempers and impatience, but also the inner glow, the learning, the maturation over the years. Of course, I don’t really know this person, and of course, I never even sat down and had a chat with him, but through his very public life and changes, I got a glimpse of what it might have happened to me if I had walked down a similar path, because he struck me as having the similar kind of temperaments, ambitions (maybe not talents, but I’d like to think so), insecurity, gentleness, vulnerabilities, even meandering life’s paths (albeit very different), relationships, joy and sufferings.

It was uncanny when I watched a him and realized that was the 20- or 30-something me, and now the much older me.

I also realized that in my case, I often thought I grew up in a house without mirrors. Nobody around me was like me. Try as I might have, I never seemed to be able to get to understand myself by knowing or observing my own family or friends or people I know. So it was a very strange revelation when I looked at this person whom I never personally know that I am looking at someone like me. Perhaps even the exact me in an alternate reality. And that gave me comfort, in many ways, that I am not alone. That I like him. So… it must mean: I like me.