“Hide your face so the world will never find you”
That’s why we live, isn’t it? We live day to day, hoping that people will see us the way we want them to see us, not for who we actually are. We wear a mask at school, a mask at home, a mask at the gym, a mask when we go out, or even a mask when we lie down at night. These masks are such critical parts of who we are we hardly even think about them, but their presence still remains. The masks are still there.
Do we need these masks? Do we need to go through our days constantly putting on a new façade? The answer is a probable yes.
The answer is a yes because we wear the masks to feel safe. We control what the masks look like, and therefore are in control of the image others see. We can hide the pain, the sorrow. We can also hide the joys and happiness in life, just so we can act like who we want to be. We do so in the hopes that, one day, who we are and who we would like to be are one and the same. But can that happen?
I’m inclined to say no. I’m inclined to say no because if you string together all of your facades and all of your masks to fashion yourself a personality, then you become an empty shell. A store mannequin. You can dress yourself up in whatever you want, but you are no longer yourself. But what of the age old adage “fake it until you make it”? People still do this. This writer, you the reader, all at some point pretend some aspect of our life in order to get what we want. We pretend to be happy so people think we’re fun. We pretend to be confident so people find us more attractive. We pretend that we have more money than we do, because no one wants to act like they’re broke.
I am writing this article in order to tell people to be themselves. Be the same person you are on Saturday night as you are on Sunday morning. Be the same person on the field as you are off of the field, and be the same person to each and every human you meet. It will feel strange, it will feel unusual, and you probably won’t want to. But it is an issue of your emotional health. The weight of the masks will one day weigh you down, so free yourself of such weights. Lose some ballast. Life is hard enough as it is, so don’t make it harder by crafting different personas.
A somber warning to us all: one day the masquerade will end. The masks we created, the personas we fabricated, and the tangled web of facades which we have woven will cease to exist. Don’t let the person who takes your final, dying breaths be someone different from who took every single, living breath.
End the games. Be happy.
