Masks. Everybody wears them, but do we all understand them? Yes and no. Let me explain. I was pondering this tonight while rocking my little girl to sleep. I suppose this is a theme that often resurfaces in my stream of thought, and it was a really good visual tonight. My daughter hates going to sleep and sometimes the act of initiating it can be pretty difficult, although tonight she was reasonably tired. Even though sleep wasn’t far away, she still put up her fight. She pulls at herself fighting sleep. She pulls at her hair; pulls at her face; pulls at her ears. She actually pulls at her own face as if she is unaware that it belongs to her sometimes. Like it’s not even a part of her, that face. That’s not where she lies. She lies within.
I just thought that this was odd because it is a metaphor of sorts, a huge symbol. Can it be both? Sure. We all have a mask, but we get lost in it and sometimes it is hard to tell where the mask ends and we begin. But there are really multiple selves within this main Self we are striving to understand, aren’t there? Many many many selves. Or is it just one? One Self. One mask. We really are all the same damn thing anyway, so if the point is “One Love” and all that rot, why is there such a split in the human psyche? What’s my point again? The mask.
The mask is often viewed as separate of the Self, or authentic self, I guess. But if all things are connected in the great things, then aren’t they really the same thing? Our mask is really part of who we are. It is included in the Self, because the Self encompasses all things. Every part of us. It’s the only place all of these pieces can come together and make sense; order in chaos.
It’s not the fact that we have a mask. It’s the fact that we fail to understand this mask. The mask is in its creation an entity unto itself. We become our masks and in a way our masks become us. Only sometimes it is as though we are peering out through the eye holes and all the while we are completely unaware as to what the mask looks like to the people peering at our eyes beneath it.
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