The Light and Shade Challenge

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. 
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

– Oscar Wilde

How many masks do you have to put on each day…

mom… evil stepmother… wife…  friend… tortured soul of a writer.

there are variations of these… to protect us in social circles… good girl… bad girl…. tough girl…  caring girl.

The poem, written by Charles C. Finn was titled Please Hear What I am Not Saying.

The opening lines read, “Don’t be fooled by me. Don’t be fooled by the face I wear, for I wear a mask, a thousand masks, masks that I am afraid to take off and none of them is me.”

Personally I think we hide ourselves because we’re afraid that the truth of who we are will not be acceptable… That if others…  even those who we trust with our love… were to see who we really are they would turn from us… that we will be seen not as angels but as monsters.

But we can’t all be monsters…

Feelings are not right or wrong… they just are.. and it is what we do with them that determines our worth.

 as a child… I was wearing a very self destructive mask through those years… one that almost fuzed itself permanently to my skin… in the process of taking it off I found…

a journey of self discovery is as simple as deciding which masks are the faces you want to show the world… they are not someone else’s masks…and if they resemble others… it is simply because you took part of what they offered up to the world… they are not foreign objects … the are slivers of personality… leaks of truth… partial revelations…

all of our heroes wear masks.

If you truly want to know yourself… or another…. it is not about removing the masks… but seeing them all at once… forest for the trees and what not.