On Wednesday morning I was a true blond. I rushed my morning, hurriedly packed my lunch, grabbed the keys to my Jetta and beelined it to the garage. Leaping into my car, I put the key into the ignition and my car wouldn’t start. In fact, my key wouldn’t even turn. I panicked, as I was already running late for work, and tried turning the key harder and harder, to no avail.
I jumped out of my car and begged for mechanical assistance from my roommate Max, who happened to be in the driveway. Max tried forcing the key into the ignition a few times and then gave up. After five minutes, I decided to grab a drink of water in the kitchen, hoping to realign my calm. As I walked into the kitchen, I noticed another set of Jetta car keys on the kitchen counter. I looked at the keys on the counter, then looked at the keys in my car, and then looked back again. It was then that I remembered that my other roommate, Melody, also drives a new Jetta, and realized that it was her keys that I was holding in my hand while mine lay on the counter-top.
We can’t live life by using the wrong keys. Just like I could not start my Jetta with Melody’s Jetta car keys, so too can we can live our lives pretending to be something or someone we are not. Our lives just won’t start or run the same with a substitute key. While you may have similarities with someone (Mel and I both drive Jetta’s), you will never have the same life, nor are you meant to. Hold on tightly to the keys that start your engine — the real you — and never try to substitute these keys to your true self because your engine simply won’t start.