Bilvavi
People often love to get their pictures taken. Whenever people make a family occasion or whenever they go away on trips, people usually take pictures of themselves.
Why do people want pictures of themselves? It is because people want to be remembered…and why do people indeed want to be remembered?
The deep reason behind this is because people identify themselves as mainly being a body and not a soul. If people would identify themselves as being a soul, why do they need their body to be remembered in a picture? It is only because people place their main value on their body, and thus they want their body to always be remembered…
When a person identifies himself as his body, he wants his physical appearance to be remembered, because he thinks, “This is how I look.” But when a person knows that he is his thoughts, he considers his body only to be a garment on top of his essence. When a person is very concerned about his ego, it is really because he identifies himself as being a physical existence. He thinks that his body is who he is; he fears death because it’s very scary that his body will disappear after he dies, and he therefore wants very much to be remembered in a picture. But if a person knows what his essence is, he knows that a picture of him is not really his picture, because his physical appearance isn’t himself. He knows that he doesn’t ever die, because the soul is eternal and does not die. Chazal state that “the righteous are called being alive even after they die.” This is because great people don’t view themselves with a body attitude, but from a soul attitude. A more inner kind of person, when he sees a picture of himself, is able to say, “This isn’t me. It might be a garment of who I am, but it’s not who I am.” He differentiates between his physical appearance and his essence.
