credit: Robert Couse-Baker, Flickr
I love the Twilight Zone. I love its dark tone. I love its social commentary. I love the writing, the directing, the cinematography, the acting… it is a joy to watch each episode unfold. That’s one of the reasons you’ll see me watching much of the semi-annual Twilight Zone marathon each New Year’s Day and Independence Day (thanks to the wonders of DVR, I can extend those marathons for weeks).
One of my favorite episodes is entitled The Masks. In it, a wealthy, dying man summons his family to his bedside for a Mardi Gras party. The man presents his family members with custom-selected masks, which he insists they must wear until Midnight if they’re to “earn” the inheritance they so desperately want. They resist, as the masks are quite hideous, but finally agree that it’s better to be ugly for a short time, if it means easy money. As it’s the Twilight Zone, things don’t quite work out as they expect – it turns out that the true masks were their faces, which hid who they truly were, and their Mardi Gras masks were perfect representations of their true selves. It’s delightfully wicked. 
Videri Quam Esse
Many of us wear masks of sorts: there’s the face we show at work (professional, composed, calm, in control when we really want to scream / cry / rage), the face we show our children (that’s the one that says, ‘Hop to it, Mister!’ when, on the inside, we’re laughing at his antics), the face we show our friends (close to our true selves, if we’re fortunate enough to have friends we genuinely trust), the face we show on a first date (happy and confident when, on the inside, we’re thinking, “What if s/he hates me? What if s/he turns out to be a stalker?” or “My clock is ticking, and if I don’t find a husband soon I’ll never have kids!”).
We use these masks to project the parts of ourselves we want people to see, and to hide the parts of ourselves that we think people shouldn’t see. They protect us from showing our vulnerabilities. And while they serve a purpose, they hurt us, too.
Barriers to connection
As long as we’re wearing a mask, we’re hiding our full, true selves from the world, and that means that we aren’t really connecting with people as fully as we could. This makes it hard to build relationships, because folks tend to have a sense of these things, and they know when we aren’t being fully ourselves.
Exhaustion
It’s tiring, trying to suppress part of yourself. Ever been in a three-hour meeting where people were droning on and on about something so pointless and insignificant that it took all your strength not to scream, “shutupShutUpSHUTUP!” ? But you didn’t do it, right? You sat there, plastered on a calm, placid smile: you put on your ‘calm on the outside, screamy on the inside’ mask. And yes, it got you through the meeting without being fired, but it also kept you from putting yourself to work finding a better way to work than that three-hour meeting. Because all that creative energy you could’ve put to work finding a solution to a work challenge? You channeled that into seeming like you were calm when you weren’t.
I’m not suggesting that we should all become utterly uncensored and say whatever we think the instant we think it. But, I kinda am suggesting just that.
What if?
What if you made a decision always to be authentically and unapologetically yourself? Yes, you’d probably lose some relationships (with people who know you only superficially), but you’d likely gain relationships, too – deeper, more meaningful relationships, with people who know, understand, and appreciate the real you. You’ll be a lot less stressed out. You’ll see your creativity soar, because you aren’t expending so much energy trying to be someone you’re not.
On the job
At work is a slightly different story. I don’t mean that you should put your mask back on at work, but it may not be a bad idea to figure out ways to channel your uniqueness while still toeing the company line. Be you, but be you at your most polite and professional.
But, my authentic self is a jerk!
And your solution to that is to pretend not to be a jerk, instead of working to become not a jerk? Besides, you may not be as much of a jerk as you think you are – it’s been my experience that truly unpleasant people either believe themselves to be fantastic, or believe themselves to be jerks but don’t care about it. So if you’re afraid that people will perceive you as a jerk, then it’s entirely possible that you’re not.
But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you do have some personality characteristics that you’d like to change: instead of pretending they don’t exist and wearing the, “I’m all right, I’m okay” mask, how about you talk to a few of your most trusted friends and ask for help? Tell them what behavior you’re trying to change, and ask them to let you know when they see you doing it, to help you steer back on course.
What if everybody hates me?
Not gonna happen. Some people won’t like the unvarnished you. But freeing your full self will help you to find the people who are your people: the people who really get you. The people who will help you move along to your future. The people you are meant to be with, serve, and love. You’re not going to find those people by being a watered-down version of you. You have to go Full Monty, so to speak, and be completely yourself.
Taking off the mask is scary, I know. But in the end, being yourself is so much more rewarding than any life you can have by pretending to be someone else. So, try it: take off the mask, a little bit at a time. Show the world your real face.
What mask(s) are you wearing? Why?
