How many of us will spend a great portion of ours lives hiding who we really are with a vengeance? Masks upon masks hide our feelings, thoughts, fears and beliefs. And society only further encourages this approach, with how it designs us to fit within a certain criteria to be acceptable. Years of conditioning have us fighting against our true identify, keeping it under wraps with a strength that can exhaust us. If only we all can admit that we have so much more to us than meets the eye.
We find the mask an easy approach. The thought of revealing the true self is one that can freeze us in our steps. There is the initial thought of possible rejection. The hardest notion to stomach. For with that, then follows the notion of being truly alone should this rejection eventuate. So it seems, that at almost any cost, we shy away from our own self. Leaving it to live in only the shadows, hushed to silence. This avoidance of the self becomes a somewhat way of life. It might appear that there would be no obvious difficulty in this way of life. This darting behind corners. This steering of the conversation in another direction. To another person. To an event. To anything else except what would pry the true self out of the depths of your being to be examined in the light of day. It would seem an easy choice. To let the mask stay.
The trouble, however, is that the soul is hungry for more. That spirit within us, knocks gently. At first it's so quiet, you may not even hear it. But the knocking becomes louder, impatient, as time carries forward. The soul wishes to speak. Wishes to share what it knows. What it has always known. It desperately wants to be heard. Wishes to heal. To transform. To grow. To connect. To tell the stories that weave the words together, tying up the loose ends and making us whole.
It longs to share the words that are held back, lest they be misunderstood. The ideas that remains only an ember, should they be blown away into the cold night, to return to nothing. The feelings locked tight away, in case they maybe misconstrued. It's that delicate dance of living through with the spirit that naturally desires to moves through us, all the while partnered with the fear of all the things we can't possibly know. The mask then, in it's cover-all design, at times is almost a fail-safe for living in the world.
Almost.
For if we wear the mask too long, we risk it fusing to our skin, permeating our entire being until our soul cries out, gasping for air. We walk the delicate line of wearing the mask so well that when we take it off briefly for relief, our soul walks miles just to get back to the moment we were last our true self. Yet now, the territory is unfamiliar, the terrain, a frightening landscape of wild endlessness with no landmark to gain our bearings.
The challenge that presents itself is to see the mask for what it is, a way of traveling through the world, with the goal to remain unnoticed. A way to avoid deeper questions, not just from others but consequentially, from ourselves too. It is the weapon against actually asking the question, "Who am I really?"
It is to be courageous enough to risk the bareness of being exposed. To ourselves and to the world, no matter what may come. And therein lies the possibility of everlasting freedom.
