Doppelgängers
Originally from German descent… probably, I think… this word is one you may be familiar with, but not one you’d typically find in the Oxford dictionary. From a technical standpoint, the term “doppelgänger” can be loosely defined as a double of a living being, or an apparition. I heard this word for the first-time while watching one of television’s best TV sitcoms, How I Met Your Mother. It’s not one of the central plots of the show, but throughout the gang stubble upon each of their “twins”.
I first watched it back in high school when it was still on Netflix. Now I’m forced to watch it on Hulu with commercials. Crazy how impatient we’ve gotten since the ability to fast forward and rewind, but that’s a column for another day.
I love the humor, the friendship, the New York city lifestyle. It’s a feel-good watch that I can always count on to watch over and over again without getting bored. This is one of my favorite TV shows with too many “specifics”. Things that just give a show its character, its niche. Like the chick and the duck from Friends or the phrase “And just like that…” in Sex and the City. “Doppelgängers” is one of those specifics.
I remember being at work one evening a couple weeks back, waitressing. I delivered two bottles of water to this table of six sitting by the front windows. I opened with my usual greeting:
“Hi everyone, welcome to Rein! My name is MJ and I’ll be your server this evening. May I start you all with some water? We offer either tap or bottled,” I said with a great big smile stretching from ear to ear.
“MJ huh, what’s that stand for? Michael Jackson?” a man, easily in his late 50’s, chuckled while gripping the stem of his dirty martini like a baseball bat.
“Ha-ha,” I laughed weakly. “No, it stands for Maria Jean, actually!” I brushed the comment off my back. I’ve gotten used to them by now. They used to be funny, until everyone thought they were being original by calling me Michael Jordan or Mick Jagger.
“You do look a little bit like Kirsten Dunst,” he said. Kirsten Dunst? I was flattered by such a compliment but, really? After I walked away from their table and put in their order, I decided to go into the bathroom and just look in the mirror. I examined my face. I looked at my blue eyes and studied the way it fought off small hues of green. I looked at my lashes and wished they were a little bit longer, just to be seen from a distance. How in the world does this face resemble Spider-Man’s lover? Probably my own fault for going by MJ.
Do you ever wish you’d wake up some days, look in the mirror, and see a different reflection looking back at you? Sometimes I scroll and scroll through TikTok or Instagram and find myself fanaticizing the faces of others over my own. I feel guilty, guilty for not being appreciative. Guilty for taking what I have for granted.
I got to thinking. Someday, we’ll look back on points in our life and not recognized the person you used to be. Sometimes, I get sidetracked cleaning my room and I stubble upon an old high school yearbook. I flip aimlessly through the pages and look at photos of a girl with red curly hair. She shares the same face as me, same name as me, but I do not know that girl anymore. She is only a piece of who I used to be, a piece of me that shaped me into who I am today. But if you haven’t seen me since High School, that’s no longer me. As time goes on, we become our own doppelgängers. We’re forced to live with the fact that we’ve turned into another person, but still have the same face of one from another lifetime.
When you think of it, it’s truly a beautiful thing. Knowing someday down the road, there’s a possibility that we can start fresh. Become someone totally different and live the life of one we’ve always dreamed. Whether that’s drinking complimentary champagne flying first class from Paris to Dubai or on the sidelines of the soccer field with your minivan double parked in a fire lane. Every now and then, we go through changes, we evolve. We become who we sought out to be, and leave who we used to be, behind.
