I renewed my driver’s license. The previous one is from only two years ago but it needed to be changed. The two photos of me side by side show why. A chiseled jaw that takes the soft square of the previous face a step further. A blond mustache that wasn’t visible two years ago. Even the throat has changed: too late for me to develop an Adam’s apple, yet the area around the vocal cords seems more pronounced now — which would make sense since the vocal cords have thickened, bringing my voice from soprano/alto to baritone.
But there’s something more, something deeper, something even more powerful than that strong jawline.
It’s the way he looks.
“She” looks uncomfortable, uneasy, almost scared. He looks confident, almost defiant. They are both me, and yet one is definitely “more me” than the other…
As one of my oldest friends put it, “I feel like seeing now your outer shape matching your inner shape. Are you feeling this too? […] for me personally your outer shape is not too important, or only important because it’s important to you — you look good for me always and in all shapes — but now your eyes seem to see what they wanted to see […]”
It’s two simple photos taken quickly at the DMV but the way those two faces look is saying something about what lies deep in their soul: and in the new picture, indeed, my eyes are seeing what they wanted to see.
The Little Prince and the Fox 