The Importance Of Being Yourself

“You’ll learn at your own expense that in the long journey of life you will meet many masks and few faces.” -Luigi Pirandello

(Photo by Mikes Photos from Pexels)

I used to read this quote on a post-it stuck on my room’s wall by my mother. I hated it. I thought it was cheesy. I guess I wasn’t ready to understand it. That was four years ago. I re-read it a couple of weeks ago, and it struck me. It was incredible how a couple of words all together could be that impactful.

It was a thing that I was kept observing in myself and in others. We walk with masks on our faces. It’s insane. Realizing that we all play parts. But what’s even crazier is that we don’t do that out of enjoyment, but out of fear. Most of the masks stem from an internal wound. Some are for fun, but even those reveal some lack in our mental wellness.

Living with a mask is fine in some sense: you get to play a role that you think you enjoy, and you are either a positive or a negative character. They both have benefits.

For the positive one it’s obvious. You are able to create and achieve things that other people may be envious of. A career, a family, a nice house, a car, lots of travelling, and plenty of other things that in your perception might constitute your dream life.

But even the negative masks have benefits. When you play the bad character, your ego is strongly involved, sometimes even more than it is in the positive frame. You get to play the victim. That’s a huge profit. You have no responsibilities, whatever happens is not your fault. The government is corrupt and unfair. Your country is underdeveloped, your life would be so much better if you were born elsewhere. You also have the excuse to not grow, because everyone else doesn’t want you to. And that excuse is so sweet.

But both roads have the same consequences. You might think that the positive one is actually “positive”. But it’s not. It’s the preamble to what is called mid-life crisis. That’s when you get to 40 years old, and you achieved everything that you should have, based on what others said, and you hoped to finally get the long awaited happiness. But it’s not there. You wake up one day, looking in the mirror and saying “Is this it?”. You feel the same, if not worse, because you have been fooled.

(Photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash)

All this concepts are great, but how does this relate to the importance of being yourself?
There are two “you” that live together side-by-side. One is the mask, the other is the real you. The mask is the end product of all your insecurities. As all of the other elements that compose our being, it has a purpose of defence. It is there so that we can avoid other’s judgment. It develops when you are young. You have to fit between peers, and if you do something that others don’t like, you are out. So you do what everybody else does. Sometimes, on the contrary, you do the exact opposite because you saw a certain behaviour in a movie and you liked it. You thought that by following that attitude you would be accepted, or in a way or another, that you would have received love.

So you began to mould that character, and before you realized it, you became it. That’s like playing a video game, and all of the sudden thinking that you are the character in it.

You became the mask.

What was a tool of utility in a couple of situations became your cage. And now you are stuck in it. But not only that, you actually enjoy being in it. Whatever you character is (positive or negative), you think that it brings you some advantages.

All of this is done at the expense of who you really are. The kid that was playing way before needing anyone’s validation. The pure joy that you were made of. Your pure essence, the one that was careless of what was happening, because it knew that everything was actually fine, no matter what. You can be spiritual or not, but you might have experienced this at least once. It’s always in us, whether you want it or not. I’ve seen one of my relatives talk about feeling this for a short amount of time, while being completely ignorant to anything related to psychology or spirituality (religion included).

Living in the reality of your true essence is the only way to be happy. Any other kind of happiness requires the abandonment of who you are to get to that thing/situation/person. This doesn’t mean that you should not be successful. That’s terrible advice. Of course you want to be healthy, wealthy, with a family or whatever else. The difference is where the action comes from.

This is the importance of being yourself.
You can never be fulfilled if you are not starting from you true core. Whatever character you decide to play is not you, and what you achieve playing that character is what it wants, not what you want. Taking decisions that are inherent to your true self is therefore essential for a good life.

This affects your relationships more than anything else. While playing your character you might look cool, but you’ll never be able to feel the connection that is one of the best experiences of life, if you use your energies to keep pretending that you are someone else.

Whenever you have the possibility to predict that you are about to do something that is not true to yourself, change it. Do what you would do if you weren’t afraid, if money were no object, and if you appreciated everyone. One single action today, can change your life in 20 years.

BUT IF YOU WEAR THESE MASKS YOU ARE AWESOME (Photo by Dominik Vanyi on Unsplash)