Arranged in a sort of hierarchy, the pantheon of those we know, have known, populate the Self. We learn who we are - define our Selves - using the language of their being, inherit our character from them.
There's something about those who have gone before us. They hold a special place, perhaps even sit at the head of these psychic heavens -visible, though - clear in our memories, giving us each ideas about what it is to be really human, reminding us of our own mortality.
Then there are those, almost transparent, nearly forgotten - people one used to know, perhaps as acquaintances, extras in one's life, remembered by face alone, not name, and maybe by one small lesson they may have taught us years ago, recognized in passing on the city street.
And those one wishes one would never meet again, likely having taught us the most difficult lessons of our lives -haunting the periphery, but always just the otherside of today.
Our families, having broken us in our molds over and over throughout our childhoods, are perhaps the most fantastic, for we imagine them, more than any others, out of all reasonable proportion - and these either much larger or smaller than the space they actually occupy, dependent on whether that breaking is accepted, or disputed.
And then celebrities, politicians, heroes and villains - the public gods - these define us, too, either through idolatry or demonization - shape us with halos and with horns.
And of course, those closest to us - with whom we wake, love, laugh, sleep. These change us so slightly everyday to leave us different from yesterday to tomorrow, are too immediate to actually sit in that innerverse, but with time, time...