One of the most popular words in psychology is personality. This is the essence of psychology, namely to understand the human soul. To understand the latent and abstract human soul, a method is needed to identify the human soul which manifests in personality which in turn gives birth to a behaviour that can be seen immediately.
Personality comes from the word persona which is taken from Latin which means mask. The world is a stage for a play, with this understanding, humans will always use masks to perform themselves in certain roles. In life, of course, we perform different roles. For example in everyday life, when we are a child at home we must wear a child's mask and behave according to the personality of the mask, namely being a cute, obedient, and always polite child.
It is different when we are in a social environment, as chairman of an organization, for example. We will also wear the mask of the chairman and suddenly turn into a figure who is stern, fierce, and merciless. Then it could be that when we leave the meeting room we meet a boyfriend, for example, we hurriedly put on another mask. Suddenly changing into a person who is very different from the figure in the meeting room earlier, we turn into a romantic, gentle and affectionate figure. There are many other clear examples, which we see as the personal mask we wear.
Just imagine if these role masks became real objects like clothes in a wardrobe. We are free to decide which mask we will use. There are various kinds of masks to choose from, there are good boyfriend masks, friendly student masks, fierce boss masks, and many other types of masks. What is clear, we choose a mask that we think is the best and most fitting mask to wear according to the conditions.
When we see people walking around or socializing with us, we do see the real faces that are conversing with us. But deep down, we must be aware that the person in front of us must be wearing a certain mask. Because it seems that no one human being has the same attitude to everyone. There must be certain people who are treated differently. It seems almost impossible not to wear a mask in this mortal life.
The question then is who are we behind the mask? Do we have an authentic face? Or do we make certain delusional masks our true faces? It seems that we are completely unaware of who we are and are enjoying the role of being the personal masks we wear without looking for a mirror to see our real face.
Can we be ourselves? Or is it our nature as beings who live in nature to wear masks for the sake of our existence? We become like chameleons camouflaging the environment to stay alive. Humans are no different from animals, which have the special ability to "trick" their enemies into staying alive.
Yes, we also wear masks to stay alive or at least still be respected as humans. Is this a natural law? If that is the case, where is honesty in life if we always wear masks to stay alive? Then why does religion so strongly condemn the hypocrites? Even in one of the verses, it says that the lowest hell is prepared for hypocrites.
'Who am I?' This is a philosophical question that will never be answered. All the sages from Buddha, Socrates, Jesus to Muhammad and many others have the same tone when they say the essence of life. They say "Know yourself, then you will know your Lord". The next question is do we exist as entities with authentic faces? Or are we just entities that can wear multiple pseudo masks?
the ultimate question of all of who we are behind the mask is very important because that is the answer to who we really are when the day comes that we will leave this life. We must be careful in wearing a different mask.