The Person Behind the Mask
We’re a week out from Halloween and like many people these days, at the Little Yellow House we’re busy getting ready for the big night. Our porch abounds with plump, robust orange pumpkins in various sizes and distortions. Inside scarecrows, skeletons and spooky trees perch haphazardly from wherever tape will hold them in place. Elf and Giant’s costumes hang in the closest, next to their carefully selected orange and purple candy bags. Flashlights are charged and stored close by.
My children will assume new versions of themselves next Saturday night. At the end of the evening, as we trade stories about our favorite costumes and favorite pieces of candy, we will fold up the kid’s costumes and prepare them for their new life in the dress up box. We’ll sample some of the goodies from Elf and Giant’s candy bags and then their father and I will lovingly tuck them into their beds and wish them the sweetest of dreams. On November 1st, they will wake again to their authentic selves. But I wonder, how long will they enjoy this luxury of childhood? When does the fluid experimentation stop and when do masks become more permanently etched into our spirits and minds?
You’ve gotta admit it: the mystery of pretend is a lot of fun. Masks are the stuff of Halloween and pretend play, but they’re also the stuff of adulthood. Masks can be goofy, fun and silly or they can help us be brave. At times, they even help us survive. Which masks do we assume voluntarily? How do we come to hide our true selves, even from our own selves? And what is lost because of it?
Recently I had the pleasure of reading Laurie Levin’s new blog on ReEnchant Planet Earth, Genderwise. She writes, “I believe my mother, a highly intelligent woman and strong leader, would have enjoyed a successful career along with motherhood, yet I’m not so sure she would have pursued one given social pressures of her time. Our limiting gender identities exist still today and are like 2 sides of a coin; a coin that holds little value compared to its potential.”
Ms. Levin couldn’t be more right. Male, female, nature lover, logger, old or young, denying who we are and our histories is binding. As binding as pretending to be someone or something we aren’t.
How is that we lose hold of who we really are, lose trust in ourselves only to hide behind a mask? I challenge each reader to shed his/her mask – if only for a moment – to see the beauty, the honor and the freedom there is in being authentic and real. Will it be scary to look out at the world without our usual shields? Absolutely, it will be scary. However, not to try is more limiting than the act of courage that it takes to try. So…
Take off the mask of adulthood and play with your kids, even if you think you look and sound silly…
Take off the mask of pride and call someone you’ve had a fight with and get to work on patching things up…
Take off the mask of superiority and ask for help…
Whatever mask you wear, take it off slowly, take it off carefully…and then breathe in the fresh, light air that’s always been around you.
Until next time, blessed be,
Chris
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Chris
25 Oct 09 at 3:05 pm