Vachon Imagined

When I was dating, image was huge.

What do I wear?

What does this text mean?

Why did he put a period at the end of that sentence?

Should I wait three hours before responding, or will that seem desperate?

Entire evenings were spent with girlfriends analyzing text messages as if we were decoding military intelligence.

And I loved it.

The ceremony.

The gathering.

The excitement.

The anticipation.

I still cherish those memories because they were fun.

Then came the date.

And most of the time—brace yourself—it was terrible.

He wasn’t what I imagined.

And I’m sure I wasn’t either.

Many of those men probably walked away with a neatly packaged image of me.

“Educated girl who talks too much.”

I wouldn’t disagree.

It’s been documented on report cards since third grade. Nice try, sir. You weren’t the first to notice.

But dating taught me something important.

Most of what we fall in love with is image.

Not reality.

Potential.

Fantasy.

Projection.

A carefully constructed character standing where a human being should be.

The funny thing is that image isn’t the problem.

Anyone who wants to build something needs one.

You want to become a priest? Better make a few lifestyle adjustments.

You want to become a professional athlete? That second piece of cheesecake and that drinking problem may need to have a difficult conversation.

Marketing departments generally prefer their million-dollar athletes sober and able to jog without requiring medical intervention.

It’s just good business.

Images have value.

Goals have value.

Ambition has value.

The problem begins when the image becomes more important than the life creating it.

We spend so much time crafting every sentence that we forget to listen.

We spend so much time managing perception that we lose touch with reality.

We spend so much time gathering followers for an experience that we forget we are the life having it.

Long before the résumé.

Long before the social media account.

Long before the relationship status.

Long before the carefully curated identity.

There was life.

There was awareness.

There was something here before the image was built.

I’m not saying don’t make millions.

Please do.

Especially if you’re a writer.

I’m rooting for you.

And I’m not saying don’t become the best version of yourself.

Train hard.

Build things.

Create art.

Write books.

Carry the football into end zones most of us will never see.

But while you’re doing all of that, don’t lose sight of who you are.

Not the image.

Not the reputation.

Not the role.

Not the character you’ve spent years constructing.

You.

The life underneath all of it.

Because the strangest thing happens when you stop protecting the image.

You become fearless.

Not because you have achieved everything.

But because there is nothing left to defend.

And at the risk of sounding trite, you become richer than any fortune, more confident than any performance, and more courageous than any dream.

The image may inspire people.

The life behind it transforms them.

One is remembered.

The other is real.