Many of us choose to live our life with a mask on
- Kyle Snyder: Live on Purpose
- October 13, 2019
- 1123
“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask.” — Jim Morrison.
I remember one year I dressed up like a zombie to go Trick-or-Treating. I wore all black and had my face paint on. My face was kind of greyish white with red so it looked like I had blood on my face. I had a round spot on my forehead, and that was supposed to be my brain.
I am not one for paint but looked good in my zombie outfit. My dad was out in the garage showing a friend something. I wanted to show my dad how I looked. I went out to show him, and his friend saw me and said I was a scary ghost.
“I am a zombie,” I said. Dad told me I looked pretty good, and I went on Trick-or-Treating.
The fact that this is October and Trick-or-Treating is right around the corner caused me to think of the mask we wear on a daily basis. Too many of us live our life with a mask on. We hide behind a mask every single day in order to keep other people at bay because we can’t let people know the real person behind our mask.
All of the pain and suffering that is behind our mask needs to be hidden from public view. There are privacy issues on how much we should put out there for the whole wide world to see. Unfortunately we hide who we really are from people who love us and care for us, people who will accept us for who we are no matter what.
Instead of letting people see the real us and letting them try to help us to improve ourselves, we try to hide it, and in return we don’t get the help we should have. I’m not talking about having professional help. I mean everyone can improve themselves, and our loved ones can help us with that.
The worst thing we can do in life is to buy into the lie that we are all alone. It’s the old saying that a man is an island: You’re born alone, and you die alone. That is one of the dumbest sayings I ever heard in my life. We are not alone. We need community people around us to embrace and encourage us when we need it.
If we turn ourselves off to the community, we are shooting ourselves in the foot. We can think no one cares about what we are going through. Wrong! People care about us more than we think.
Sometimes we don’t really understand how much people really love us. They show they love us, but unless we can get inside their heads and know how they feel toward us, can we really know how much they love us?
We need to be open to share our worries, fears and failures with people who love us and who we can trust. We most likely already know who those people are, who we can trust and tell things to: our mom, dad, spouse, siblings and really close friends.
Maybe we are just not one to open up to anyone. Then we need to start out small and build ourselves up to open up more: something like the fact that our co-worker does little things that drive us nuts.
See what their response is, then open up bit by bit to them. We never want to tell people everything all at once. That could just blow up in our face. If we can find someone to open up to, that is worth its weight in gold.
If we hold everything in, it will act like a pop bottle that has been shaken: Once it is opened, it will blow up.
The key is to release our frustrations little by little so it won’t blow up. If we can find somebody who we can talk to, then we will be better people for it.
I will add that it needs to be a two-way street. We also must be the ones to listen to other people as well. Maybe not the same people, but see if there is someone who is trying to reach out to you who you can come along beside to help on their journey through life.
Try it and see what happens. You will probably be amazed by the results.