dailydatewithgod

I am not sure why listening to or watching people do impressions of others is so funny and fascinating.  Some comedians make a living from it. I believe on some level we all take ourselves way too seriously so it is a relief to see someone act like someone else knowing it is not them. They are freer in some way to go with the impression they have of another person.  It is not as easy to swallow when you watch someone do an impression of you, at least it wasn’t the first time I saw it done.  However, with a little bit of time, I became fascinated by it.  We do not often realize the impression we give off.  Of course, the person who is impersonating does so through their own particular lens so it can vary from person to person.  One of the times I saw a student of mine do an impression of me in front of a group and started to feel angry but after a couple of deep breaths, I started to laugh.  It was done as part of an 8th-grade sketch on all the teachers and she did such a good job.  The impression of course was comprised of things you do not think kids notice and was exaggerated but she did a good job!  It gave me a reason to not take myself so seriously and worry about what impression I was leaving. The fact that she did the impression and was not overly worried that I would be angry with her and hold it against her says more about the internal impression I had left on her.  She was a student I had in class and worked within the student government.  Whatever elements of my behavior that translated into funny musings might stick in the minds of my students but the fact that they took a chance that I would laugh along with them meant they saw in me a playfulness that I did not know I impressed upon them.  While I am probably reading too much into it, I find myself wondering in our day to day lives how much of the impression we leave with others is felt and how much of it seen.  God invites us to recognize the impression on our own hearts of ourselves and how we bring that to every encounter with others.  It is my hope that I seek to be impressed by the presence of the hearts of others along with whatever comes across.