I am not at home, but as far away as I could possibly be – down under again. Talking to my friends here in Australia is easy because we connect as we did 31 years ago. On the second day our conversation touches the concept of `alter ego´. What does this even mean in German, I ask myself, let alone in English. I struggle a little, but still we have this kind of philosophical discussion. How our inner self, our true personality (or our inseparable friend as the English dictionary puts it) sometimes gets buried underneath the person we have to be: on duty, functioning, (overly) polite, and also not able or willing to reveal everything about us towards anybody we get together with … and so on and so forth.
Our talk lasts half an hour or longer, all the while my host makes a cake, her daughter going in and out the garden, and also her mother putting her book away and contributing to our conversation. After a while we assume that to be away from our normal everyday life can help to find our alter ego and to engage with our inner personality. For the whole time I enjoy myself a lot: probably because part of my alter ego is this philosophical person – a quality in me which appears while I am not at home but as far away as I could possibly be.
It will be interesting what other qualities will resurface while I´m here.