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The mask

In our childhood we have bought various types of mask and enacted the personality of that mask, it may be of a ghost or a super hero, or some famous person. Those were the playful days and now we don’t do such things. That is because we wear a different type of mask, the one that sticks around not on our face but on our personality. And every one of us is wearing it knowingly or unknowingly. It is all the prevalent more now as we are now in the extreme socializing stage both physically and through social media. (Leave alone this Corona phase, it is temporary). Especially for the younger generation it has become as if a second nature, because we want to present and project the best of ourselves, always.

The true identity may be known to the very few, the masked identity is what the world sees. There can be various reasons that we wear these masks and go around doing our work on day in and day out basis. Some reasons can be good and some reasons can be bad. The most common mask we wear when we want to hide our pain, fear and vulnerability. We wear the mask of a smiling face so that the world doesn’t come to know what is going on inside. We may be having a tough time in office or in our relationship but we don’t want to show our true self to the world, the pain and fear of the world around me falling apart. So a mask is required to show my smiling face oozing self confidence.

We all want social acceptance and want to be liked by everyone around us, which is just not possible. There will always be someone who will hate us in some form. Therefore we are ready to do whatever is required to gain social acceptance. It may be just opposite to our personality trait but still we will wear the mask the gel in that environment. If such social acceptance is going to help me gain something, like moving up the social ladder or financial gain or a promotion in office, we will willingly wear the mask to achieve our aim. For some the mask of a friendly and helpful nature becomes essential when the purpose is to deceive and manipulate someone or to harm someone, and that thing cannot be traced back to us. Most of the time, it is used to take revenge or give outlet to our long suppressed anger towards someone. Here we can again wear the mask of sadness when we are actually happy inside. Similarly we may wear the mask of happiness or to hide our excitement or sorrow or depression or shame, as the situation may demand. A person with an underdeveloped personality or insecurity or lacking the self confidence will be more prone to wearing a mask. No one wants to expose those traits to the world. Sometimes we wear mask for a short period of time and sometimes we have to enact for a long time.

For quite many of us there is a marked disconnection between the outer self and the inner real person. Theoretically we want that people should accept us as we are but often the fear of rejection forces us to compromise our true personality trait. Only in the seclusion of our home we realize it and may be repent it, but the circumstances may be such that we cannot undo it. Though the relationships developed on the basis of this mask are always unfulfilling and shallow but we still carry on with this frustrating cycle to gain our materialistic and relationship goals. We cannot change things around us, nor we can change ourselves, the mask becomes the best alibi for us and suits our purpose. When the purpose of our putting on a mask is for helping others it can be said to be a good mask, but more often than not it is for our insecurity and selfish nature. The mask can have a long term effect on our psychological health. Then the short term benefit which we get from wearing the mask far outweighs the long term psychological scar which is inflict on ourselves.

The less we need a mask the better it is for us.

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