Always the same age

“We are always the same age inside.”
– Gertrude Stein

Someone once told me they believed people are a certain age throughout their lives. That is, they act a certain age all their lives, no matter what age they actually are. We say someone acts like a child, or someone acts like an old man, say, in a general kind of way, and we all know people like this. But saying someone is an exact age all their lives is kinda specific, whether it’s 8, 24, or 76. Or all three, depending on the situation, perhaps. The PAC ego model divides people in three categories: Parent, Adult and Child. Originally developed by Eric Berne as part of his Transactional Analysis theory, the concept postulates that whenever we communicate with someone it is from one of the three categories (with adult being the one to attain; parent tends to be patronising or aggressive, perhaps; child needy, despairing or apathetic). I occasionally ponder who the real me is, or if there even is one. Does it always stay inside me? Or is it when I’m with family, or friends, or my lover, or at work, or only when on my own? I think we are all slightly different with different people in different situations.