Our natural life is constantly intermingled with other lives: narrated, imagined, invented. Today more than ever, in a society populated with models with which to identify, the illusion of an autonomous self becomes even more uncertain and derives from a subject that must constantly reinvent itself. When we feel that our life has become narrow, that we are not enough with what we are, we use the imagination as an antidote and guide. Thanks to the imagination, we can challenge the non-elected conditioners and project existence beyond its confines; We can live other lives, which feed not only the encounter with other people and real situations, but also of figures and models from literary texts and the media. Since the models with which to identify themselves have expanded, populated with celebrities, the construction of an autonomous self has become more uncertain. In this context, Bodei invites us to "grow in self and move away from self": to appropriate our best part and, at the same time, to experience alternative paths. At bottom, there is no compact self, a unitary whole that can be absolute owner. Each of us is the fruit of a continuous reinvention of self and interaction with others: it is in our own identity that the difference grows, with all the difficulties, the anxieties, the misplacements that this entails. Being guests of life means living on the border between interior and exterior, identity and difference, self and other.