Living Without Masks
Consider this: You are chatting in a group, and discussion veers towards a certain person X. Specifically, towards his attitude towards money.
The group thinks that X is a miser, stingy with his money. He doesn’t buy things that he should, and that he can easily afford. But, in your heart, you think that X’s behavior is more cautionary than stingy, that he is careful with his money, which is a totally fine thing to do. And let’s assume that you think so because you have a similar attitude towards money as X; you would do the same in his place.
At this point, suppose the group asks for your opinion on the topic of X and his money; what you would do if you were in his place. What do you say now?
Do you say, “X is a miser. If I were in his place, I would live it up a bit,” or do you acknowledge that you actually agree with X and try to explain X’s perspective to the group, how he is not cheap, but simply careful with his money?
If you acknowledge the truth, you risk being talked about in the same manner behind your back. Expecting this outcome, this is the difficult road to take in the present moment. But on this road, you know that you were honest about yourself, and you don’t have to worry about, and remember, what you had said when the discussion had taken place. Next time a similar question pops up anywhere, you can answer it truthfully, which is simple because you don’t have to think too much about it. What is, is.
Alternatively, you can take the easy road now by agreeing with the group just to “be with them”. On this road, you might have a decent conversation with the group at the moment, but this will be your mask. You must always wear this from now on whenever you are in the company of anyone from the group. You’ll always have to keep what you had said at the back of your mind.
If you take off your mask, even by mistake (as in you forget what you had said the first time, and on a subsequent occasion, you say something different), you risk being called a hypocrite, and a liar, if and when they find out that you practice something and preach something else.
This is a very small and basic example. Probably nobody is even going to remember who said what, about whom, and when. But it is representative of many others in life, of considerably greater significance and gravity. Just take a moment to recall any such situation that you might have faced yourself, and where you took the easy way out.
Now imagine what it would be like if you had taken the difficult road then, but were now free of the burden of the mask. In hindsight, the “easy” road does not appear to be so easy, does it?
The idea is to avoid putting on this mask of lies. One lie leads to another leads to another leads to another. It is better to be ridiculed in that moment — and that too in front of people who can’t even try to understand you or your point of view, because if they did, they wouldn’t ridicule you in the first place — and be done with the problem, than to carry around your mask everywhere you go, and to put it on at even the slightest hint of entering the same territory again.
Most of us reach a point in life where we wonder why life has to be so difficult and complex. Well, the truth is life is difficult and complex; but by itself, it is not as much so as we think it to be. We are ourselves responsible for making life much more complex and difficult than it has to be.
Most of the lies and pretensions can be done away with if we just show a little bit courage to stand up for what we believe in, to stand up for ourselves.
We shouldn’t be embarrassed by our values and beliefs. They form our identity. If we think there is something wrong with them, we should try to change them, and become better. But just pretending otherwise is not going to help. To have a peaceful existence, we need to first make peace with who we really are.
When we are comfortable with ourselves, we would go to sleep with a lighter heart and a clearer head, and we’ll have two of the most important things needed to be happy in life — peace of mind and contentment of the heart.
Originally published at echoesintheether.wordpress.com on January 31, 2018.
