The mask has become a highly clichéd symbolism for human behaviour and experience. It has been used time and again generation after generation. Today, I attempt to use this very same cliché in a context that is extremely pure and heartfelt. I attempt to use it to explain an innocent usage of a mask and also to highlight how to keep the negative out.
Masks are of different types. Some with a devilish almost evil expression on them, others are very angelic and then we have the funny. All of us put on these masks sometime or the other during the course of our lives. As we plunge into situations, sometimes we are forced to dawn a mask, something we do unconsciously and most often without a trace of malice in our hearts. One such moment is when we hide behind a mask for the soul purpose of making another person, generally someone we love, happy.
The purest, most powerful emotion is love. Being the complex, multifaceted emotion it is, there are tonnes of complex variations that go along with it. Love can make you do a whole array of things. Sometimes we slip into habits that might not necessarily be the best for us, purely because we believe it is something our loved one likes to do. True, there is nothing wrong with such fierce love, but the limits need to be made clear.
Questioning our comfort and the degree to which we are okay with such profound gestures will be the first indicator to remind us just how far we are going. If it doesn’t come naturally, it’s probably not the right thing for you.
Sometimes we persist in our endeavour to make the new behaviour part of our personality because we don’t want to give up, but are we really being true to ourselves? Do we go through all these changes just because we are supposed to? Love can bring out the best in people as well. One needs to decide for themselves how good it gets and when the interdependence is actually beneficial for all involved.
Some of the purest forms of love taking over behaviour I have ever seen is when little children put up masks so as to save their parents pain.
One little girl I have worked with would constantly take on grown up responsibilities and verbalise that she enjoyed it, just because she wanted her parents to be happy. What little girl would rather stay at home and do chores than go out and play with her friends in the evening? As adults, we seem to think that children are too emotionally immature to be capable of such selfless love. Truth be told, they trump us adults when it comes to emotional maturity.
Doing and feeling, sacrificing and enduring for others are actions we indulge in wholeheartedly only when we care wholeheartedly. Sometimes the masks here are contrary to our own natural ways. For instance, a friend who wants to cheer us up may agree to watch a type of movie or listen to a genre of music they don’t really like, just to make us happy.
How often have parents taken the smaller piece of their favourite foods just so their children could enjoy more? Putting up masks in these contexts doesn’t really seem like a bad thing, does it? These kind of masks take great emotional maturity to wear. These are the kinds that come when extreme internal happiness is tied to the happiness of others.
Why not love a little more? Where’s the harm? The only harm comes when we lose ourselves in the bargain. And we only set ourselves up to lose ourselves when we do not believe in the equal importance we hold in relationships.
Conversely, expecting the ones we love to sway to our whims is unfair and impractical. A human tendency most of us possess, if not all, is the tendency to expect a lot from those around us let alone those we love.
Somehow we just expect understanding and when the understanding doesn’t come it angers us. Learning to turn our expectations inward will help us live happier. When we expect unrealistic things from those we love we ignite a stress in them. This stress leads the individual to go over and above their capacity and then leads them to dawn unrealistic, negative and impractical masks which are too difficult to keep on. When it gets to heavy, those masks break away and leave in its wake shards of broken promises, unfulfilled wishes and trampled dreams.
In a situation like this then, where do the fingers point? The key is to identify the masks, keep our expectations real and enjoy the love we receive and also be fierce with the love that we give.
