fig.1 - The Crying Face Mask Meme
Hello everyone, today I will be talking
about our facial masks. More specifically, the ones that are not our own.
But why this topic? It’s quite simple, but
if you dig more into it, you can understand how crucial it is for our lives.
It is important to speak about this because
I don’t often see people talk about this and a common thing to do for the human
being.
If you think about it, we hide are not
ourselves in a big part of our life. It’s like ourselves in a mask that doesn’t
belong to us! We lie to everyone from our friends our loved ones, with masks
that we wear during the years. We avoid expressing who we are, our true selves
and our thoughts, because we want to fit in, gain approval or just “be cool”.
Because expressing who we are, is not enough. It’s like we are living someone
else’s life.
For example, smoking. Most of the time,
people smoke because they are friends with other persons and want to be like
them, like I said, to “be cool” like them.
We also wear masks to show the “perfect
life” that we don’t live in. We always have the best job, the most fun
coworkers, the fastest car, the perfect house or and the most handsome dearly
beloved. Our ego traps us in this artificially staged world that always want
more and more, there’s always a different desire and you never settle. I like
to call it the “fake it until you make it”. In the social networks, we live a
life that it is everything but nothing our own life
We wear masks because we fear others
will see who we really are because we think that we are ridiculous and
everybody else will just mock each time we do something. It’s like a shield
that protects us from judgment and to hide our weaknesses because we fear we
will not be good enough in the other person’s eyes. And those masks are perfect
for this case, but why can´t you just be yourself? Why do you even care anymore
about that?
Men learned how to hide their weaknesses
and feelings and, in their place, learned how to act “strong, tough and rude”,
by just looking cocky at all circumstances. Men can be rude and sometimes
stupid, but they are just acting “strong” to give everyone else confidence when
they don’t got none of that confidence in themselves. On the other hand, women
have been conditioned to hide their strengths, to act sweet and fragile. To
look helpless, and non-threatening. These stereotypes don´t define a single bit
of what men and women are. We act like it, but on the inside, we are totally
different persons.
The more we wear these “fake” masks and
play someone else’s role, the more we distance ourselves from our authenticity.
We lose trust and confidence in ourselves and mainly our authenticity when we
let someone else define who we really are or “should be”. Only caring about by
the opinions of other people, we lose our own original and unique way of
thinking and start to second-guess our own thoughts more consistently. The
doubt will always be present, and we won’t be able to think independently. Our
relationships suffer as well, because if you are not good with yourself, how do
you can be good with any other person in your life. Life ceases to flow freely
through us, and as a consequence, we tend to grow more and even more
frustrated, stressed, and depressed.
But there’s always hope. Many people, reach
a tipping point, especially around midlife,
when they wake up and ask themselves the most existential question of them all:
“Who am I?” They know they want to live more authentically, to live with more
meaning, to live their own life. They just want to find themselves and be
themselves in the purest way possible. By don’t care about everyone else thinks
or acts or for whatever reason. Like a famous artist said in a song “Don’t be
mad because I’m doing me better than you doing you”. In effect, they are
beginning to take the “baby-steps” necessary to draw the line in the horizon,
remove their masks, and say, “This is who I am, and this is who I want to be
for the rest of my life”.
It may take time. It will always depend on
the person. It may take several life-changing experiences to help you realize
it’s time to remove your mask. It may hurt you, but in the long-term, it will
be worth it. After wearing so many different and countless masks for so long,
it’s not easy to connect to yourself and, importantly, to express your true
self and in the company of others that care about you and love you no matter
what. It may take continued effort to heal your past conflicts and traumas until
you are ready to move on, mask-free or with a mask. Your own mask to live more
authentically and with deeper meaning (like you should have always lived).
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