There is a proverb that goes ‘ You have three faces; the
first face you show to the world, the second face you show to your close
friends and your family, and the third face you never show anyone. It is this
one that is the truest reflection of who you are’. This particular saying is
attributed to the Japanese people, and I believe is it is an accurate statement
of the individual. It is also quite sad that we feel the need to wear these masks. That
said, I believe some people do learn to love themselves enough to feel that
they can show their true face to the world and be proud of the person they are.
Why can’t we just be the person we are? Why do we need to hide our true selves?
To answer this is not necessarily easy as there are multiple impacting factors
at work here.
The reason why we have these different masks that we wear is
because we are afraid of how society will judge us and our true character. This
in itself is sad because originality and uniqueness should be celebrated and
not condemned. Sometimes it seems that certain people who have reached a
certain status in this life can really only show their true selves and not be
judges for it.
Well let’s analyse this proverb. The first face is the one
that we show to the world… it is the mask that is socially accepted and that we
present to the world. It is the one we wear on a daily basis which we wear when
we interact with colleagues at work etcetera. Why do we wear this mask? As
mentioned, this face we wear is socially accepted, we will not be judged when
wearing this mask because we are just like everyone else. When everyone is the
same, and there is no one standing out in the crowd, there are no stand outs
and no one is a target.
The second mask is the one we wear when we are around
friends and family. We are loved and accepted amongst these people, they know
us and love us for the person we are… warts and all! Our eccentricities and
uniqueness are embraced and celebrated. We are much more comfortable in these
surroundings to be our true selves and be the unique and beautiful person that
we are. We can let our guard down here and relax a bit.
I think the third mask that it is said we wear is a bit of a
grey area. I think some people might wear it and others don’t. This comes down
to our individual personality. Are we an introvert or an extrovert? If you are
an introvert, you might hide certain traits of your true nature, and they might
only come out to shine in private (this is a real shame because nobody gets to
see how unique you really are!), and even your friends and family might only
get the barest of glimpses of your true personality. When it comes to extroversion,
this socially outgoing person might just wear the one mask – the one of their
true self- because they cannot be bothered with the smoke and mirrors of this
silly game! They say accept me for who I am and if you don’t like it, bad luck!
This is an awesome way to be, and it is such a liberating way to live. I applaud
these people and their forthright attitude to life!
These three masks that we wear, or more to the point, the shedding
of these three masks that lead to our essential being, can all be related directly
to our ego. The reason I say this is because we care about how we are seen by
others, and we just want to be accepted and loved. Unfortunately in our minds,
we think that society at large will not accept the uniqueness of our
personality. Why is this? We have all been conditioned in some way as we have
grown up, by our parents or by certain institutions… and all of these have told
us how we should act in life. Certain things are accepted and others are not.
As a result we have learnt to hide aspects of our being so that we are liked on
a large scale. This is a very sad state of affairs when we are not loved for the
person we are. It is things like this that remind me of tall poppy syndrome
where people are ‘cut down to size’ for daring to be more than they can be.
The tides are changing and people are awakening to the shift
in consciousness that allows them to be better than what they think they can
be. Individualism is accepted and celebrated. The masks can be taken off and
thrown to the sky. So,be who you want to be and let your freak flag fly!
Yours in health,
Ben J
No comments:
Post a Comment