A picture is worth a thousand words captured in that millisecond that the flash illuminates its scene. It portrays a moment, but is it true? Is the image correct? Look at those people caught frozen—perhaps staring back at you alertly. Does this image give justice to who they are as people? We are all so complex, with innumerable aspects to our personality. It is not even remotely possible for one image—one fraction of a moment—to depict who we are in our entirety. You look at yourself in the mirror and you see only the most superficial layer and yet you know that there is more, that behind the makeup or behind the rehearsed smile—there is a person with feelings and with thoughts that the outside world will rarely see. The image captured in a picture is that of the image reflected back at you by your mirror—only the barest, most sparse layer.

It would be a disrespect and an insult to you were someone to define you in this way. These labels compartmentalize and prioritize who we are when everything about us is so fluid, connected, and changing. By the time you develop the picture, we have already moved on, learned, and developed past that point. After all, it is only the faintest glimpse into our lives…and just like that—it’s over.