This is one of my paintings, two ways. The first image is the actual painting and the second is mucked around with in Adobe Illustrator. Gertrude Stein wrote “rose is a rose is a rose”. Things simply are what they are no matter how much you alter them. I feel like this is true in people too. We can polish up, learn a few new tricks and modify our behavior, but we are who we are. It is hard to accept this in ourselves and really hard in the people we love (or dislike). Even though these two images are quite different they are as connected as we all are. We are linked by our humanity. Over identification with our differences disconnects us and we all know how that turns out, right?