Monday’s Meditation: On The Many Masks We Wear
There are different versions of ourselves we adopt according to the setting and the people around us; you’ve noticed yourself doing this, haven’t you?
When at work, for instance, we know we need to be our most professional selves. We’re more aware of our language, more polite, and perhaps, more guarded.
With family, we relax into long-established roles. We say whatever we want. We joke and maybe we fight.
At cocktail parties, we’re, well, let’s face it, we’re fairly phony.
We are stunningly complex creatures, capable of calling upon varying aspects of ourselves at any given moment.
This shifting of the modes we exist in is mostly unconscious–a facet of having a personality, of our attempt to be likable and successful.
These modes are masks.
And the more we feel obligated to don those masks, the more disparity there is between the masks we assume and the authentic self residing somewhere behind it, and the more unhappy we tend to become.
There is nothing so limiting for most people than to feel as though their life requires them to wear a certain mask so much of the time that they begin to feel as though they don’t even know what their face underneath it looks like. Or, what they’d like it to.
There are few things more exhausting than feeling as though you have to be “on.”
Maybe it’s an unrealistic hope that we might be able to hang up our masks and just be ourselves all the time. Maybe the social conventions by which we’ve learned to abide are, in part, what enable the doing of business, the arranging of carpool schedules, the art of parenting, and so on.
And yet, I tend to think that the more we are consistent in being our true selves, the happier we are.
The more we speak to others, be them brothers or bosses, with the same level of respect, courtesy, and candidness, the more truthful we feel. The more we give ourselves permission to be real with clients and business partners as much as with our closest cousins, the more useful we become. The more we deem our true face an acceptable one to show to everyone, the more liberated we are. More actualized. More free.
It may be that your life doesn’t allow for consistency of personality across all circumstances. If it doesn’t, I hope you ask yourself why, and, how much that inability to consistently be your true self is impacting you.
Your true self, by the way, is not the sloppiest version of you. It is not the one who has a short temper, doesn’t give people a first chance, speaks before thinking, and is quick to judge. That is the ugliest mask of them all.
Your true self, your real life, gloriously human face isn’t your most careless, or your least self-aware.
It is the intentionally re-claimed most beautiful face you were born with, the one that believes everyone must be doing their best, the one that tells the hard truth when necessary, and does so with love. The one who believes in possibility and kindness and living free.
The good news: your real face translates.
You can wear it to work and you can wear it at school. You can shine on in the grocery store and you can rock out in traffic. You can radiate with family, and you can clown with children.
You can take you with you wherever, with whomever, you are.
6 Comments
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6 Comments
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lovely
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Appreciate you. xx
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Simply beautiful. Perfect. Thank you.
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Thank YOU. 🙂
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This is so beautifully written. I just had a conversation with my daughter a few days ago about the masks I wear and how exhausting and unenjoyable it is to live like that. Thanks for sharing!
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Completely exhausting! So much easier to be you consistently. 🙂 xx
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lovely
Appreciate you. xx
Simply beautiful. Perfect. Thank you.
Thank YOU. 🙂
This is so beautifully written. I just had a conversation with my daughter a few days ago about the masks I wear and how exhausting and unenjoyable it is to live like that. Thanks for sharing!
Completely exhausting! So much easier to be you consistently. 🙂 xx