The Self We Hide
Greetings,
Every one of us has a duplicate of him or herself, that the world does not see. It is not our work face, not our carefully adjusted expression that we maintain around friends, not even the voice that we use at home. It is more profound, gentler, more frail in nature - the self, we conceal.
It is to this inner self that we are known: to which we confess our fears, our regrets, our unarticulated dreams. It is the child who had a desire to be free, the teenager who could love without any restrictions, the adult who continues to talk to the stars at night. But in the majority of cases we store them away in the storehouse of fear of what others would say should they be caught at the actual reflections of us.
Society demands masks. In order to survive in school, in employment, in meetings we learn how to smooth our surfaces. We put confidence on as we tremble within. When we are feeling love in our hearts we put on indifference. We put smiles on and fight a battle with storms that no one can imagine. Over time the mask becomes so common place that even we mix it up with our identities.
Never, however the suppressed self dies. It recurs in quiet times - at the end of the day, when everything is quieted, when the phone is off, when the room becomes quiet. We round another turn, and then are with ourselves. It is such a thing as touching and soothing as a lost friend. Sometimes it seems to be a stranger, a person whose voice shakes with the questions which we do not want to hear.
Why do we hide? Maybe it is because when we tell the truth we are exposed. It is risky to unveil the most painful trauma, the most absurd wishes or the most tender aspirations. People judge too quickly. They laugh, they brush away, they turn our truth upon itself. and thus gradually we hush the voice inside.
Yet hiding has a cost. The less we accept this self, the less we are connected with life. We start to act like a play of someone where we are reciting lines that are meaningless and acting in a role not belonging to it. Laughter is empty, the conversations are shallow, the days are repeated. There is something in us which cries, *this is not everything you are.
The path is not the one of dropping masks since we also need them but of creating room to be ourselves. To be able to sit with ourselves without being judgmental or judgmental and allow the hidden self to breathe. To locate safe spaces, safe individuals, where we will be allowed to share bits of our truth without intimidation. To write, to paint, to speak, to walk-- anything to enable us to give that voice within its due.
Since it is not our weakness that we are hiding. It is our depth. It is where our imagination, our care and our real strength reside. Under the masks, under the roles there is a self to love, not the world by the world, but first us.
And perhaps, just perhaps, should we venture to allow it to show itself, that we will find the rest are hiding. In making ourselves what we are, we authorise others to do the same.
And what more freedom is there... than living without hiding?
Regards,
Artist1111