On Masks...

I look around me and see people in masks - masks of propriety, masks of being happy, masks of being bleeding hearts - all sorts of masks and I wonder what they do with these masks when they are alone. Do they yet see them when they look in the mirror? Do they take them off when they go to bed? If two people in a relationship agree to wear the masks that each want to see on the other, do the masks stay fused on only in the heat of the discomfort of each other’s presence or do they come off in front of another and then are donned on again when the play resumes? Masks are fascinating and to a certain extent, commonplace. They perhaps make life more colourful. But they also make life more contrived.

If you do not know whether you can ever see another truly as he or she is and accept them as they are, warts and all, and rather build an idealized or rather ‘Bollywoodized’ version of them to love, then masks are indeed a very attractive alternative. Because the truth is every one of us is flawed and we carry many scars as remnants of battles fought and won or lost. To see another as they are, to learn that none of us can point fingers at another without in effect condemning ourselves as well, would be liberating. There would then be no need of masks. Every flawed one of us is also beautiful. The beauty of the body is so transient that if you build your life around the image of yourself that you think impresses others, you will find at the end of the day, when the beauty fades, you have nothing to fall back on. But if you cultivate the beauty of your mind by opening it out to truth and reality, generosity and kindness, willingness and gratitude, you need nothing to hide behind and you certainly do not need others to hide from you.

A friend had posted a video this morning and as I watched the woman in it saying that people declaring that they are fine is probably the main reason why you find so many unhappy and discontented souls out in the world today, I smiled because I usually think the same thing. I do not say I am fine when I feel sad. If a close friend asks me how I am, I usually tell them I am low if that’s the way I feel or that I am ridiculously happy for no reason if that is the way I feel. I see no reason to say I am fine unless of course the person asking has no real interest or has lost the right to actually ask after me. This too is a mask, this saying of ‘fine’ always – except that in this case the mask we don is to fool ourselves more than anyone else. Perhaps this too is necessary, then again if we cannot even see our very selves for what we are, which mask will be enough?

I do not write this in order to point out a problem and suggest a solution – I merely observe what I see around me and write it down. I have always done that. In writing, if you don a mask, you touch no one – there you cannot lie – so for me writing has always been a solace, a way out of confounding thoughts, an enjoyable mode of expressing what many of us contemplate on but few would put down in words. Live, if you can, with no masks or failing that, think awhile on why you need so many…maybe you will find that you are simply quite wonderful just the way you are…