Dear LPG, 

I found myself having a conversation with my young granddaughter not so long ago.  I asked that age old question about what she wants to be when she grows up.  She told me that when she grows up she wants to be Elsa the ‘Frozen’ queen.  Her parents have made sure that she has all the appropriate garb in her dressing up box and when she puts it on she is Elsa as far as she is concerned.  I know that she is young and that she will grow out of it but, though her fixation with the character is still only a couple of years old, it is her insistence that she is going to be Elsa when she grows up, rather than that she is going to be like Elsa, which bothers me a bit.

Many of us have watched a film or read a book and wished that we could be one of the characters in it?  

I have always thought that when we are young, we all live in the ‘if only’ world to a certain extent.  I have to admit to doing quite a bit of wishing during my younger years and it often happens when things go wrong in your own life.   When I was a lot younger I think that the people that I wanted to be like were the ones that were close to me.

There was a teacher who I admired and a couple of older school friends that always seemed to come over as being so much cleverer than me or so much happier than me.    Then there are the celebrities who you might want to emulate because of a particular talent they obviously possess, something that they have done or achieved or the way that they look. 

Some people are fixated on one person who, in their eyes, can do no wrong while others find different people that they would rather be, depending on which attribute they are looking to improve in themselves, but having taken a look on the internet I have worked out that lots of us look to others to improve who we think we are.

But there is a lot of difference between wanting to be like someone else and wanting to be someone else.  I suppose that there is no harm in not knowing the difference for a bit while you are young.  We all know that reality kicks in all too soon for most of us… 

CC, Dulwich