It never seizes to amaze me how isolated in our own worlds we are …

We are staying in the same house with people that we love and care for, we are eating with them and sit on the same couch, watch the same shows and yet, we don’t really know who these people are.

It is a phenomenon in our part of the world how disconnected we are. We are the most social communities; we visit our relatives and we share experiences, chit chats and news, but we do not share ourselves. We do all these things because we feel obliged and not because we want to.

A lot of couples wake up one day to realize that they are spending their lives with a complete stranger. They cannot be their true selves in front of the closest person to them and this is really sad.

They cannot express their true desires and inner thought because they fear being judged and misunderstood. We share an outer world where we are wearing masks, lots and lots of masks and each has its own purpose.

You wake up in the morning and before you even wash your face; you wear the first mask. This mask is supposed to hide worry, anger, exhaustion and complete confusion of life and future. You wear this mask because you don’t want those living with you to get a true feel of what you are thinking of or going through, because this will shake the stable chair they have comfortably seated themselves on, and you don’t want them to change their perception of you. They have always seen you in control and you don’t want that to change; not now.

As you reach work, it is time for the second mask. This one will give you the professional attitude as you need to be taken seriously by your colleagues, subordinates and superiors. You have to keep this mask on for the longest part of your day. It exhausts you but you cannot take it off because it is too risky to do so and people might get a peek at your vulnerabilities and take advantage of them and maybe use them against you.

During the day; you might need to put the happy mask when dealing with a client, or an amused mask when you are entertaining one. Mask after mask after mask and the game continue.

It seems that the only time you can be free of all the masks is when you are alone and that’s when you start talking to your inner self to make it feel that everything is ok. How lonely is that?

We do the very same things every single day and people around us think that they know us and can figure us out any time, and we might think the same about them, but the truth is, we don’t know each other and we don’t communicate, and the more we close ourselves to the world, the harder the communication gets, and then all of a sudden, we are faced with a cruel fact; we are strangers even to ourselves and the masks are even there in our solitude, and we no longer remember who we are, so we adopt the closest thing to our old self as we once knew it, and the masks become us and we become the masks.

When I realized that I am losing myself to the masks, I decided that I would never hide behind one, and that I will always say what’s on my mind and how I feel, because keeping it inside would only make things worse and will not get me what I want in this life. If you want your family to understand how exhausted and overwhelmed you are; you just have to say something.

People’s nature is to assume things according to what they see and feel from others; and they take things and other people for granted believing that once a bond is formed; it will last. But the truth is that anything in life needs nurturing and maintenance; if you don’t spend enough time and effort taking care of what you have; you will lose eventually.

Don’t believe that others know you; you have to make them know you by opening up and sharing yourself with them. Don’t assume that others know how you feel about them; you need to tell them. Don’t take for granted whatever you have; you might lose it in a blink of an eye while you are not the tiniest bit prepared.

Life is hard enough with all the help that we are getting from God and people; let’s try to make it easier on ourselves and others by sharing, communicating and once and for all, dropping the masks and showing our true colors.

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