Adeline’s Mask

Dear lovely people,

“We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be.” ― Patrick Rothfuss.

Adeline’s business was flourishing, she had big plans to expand the business to other part of the country and to make a name. She is that kind of person who loves the spotlight, wherever she went, she wanted to be recognized, to be idolized, she wanted everybody to know she was around.

She soon forgot her plans, she forgot completely her plans to grow, to change her life for the better and she forgot her plans to make her business a household name. Her sudden voracious desire for idolization kind of reprogrammed her brain. Adeline was ready to do whatever and anything it will take for people to see her as the sunrise and sunset, she could go any length to get the praises streaming her way.

Out of nowhere, she started spending extravagantly on the things that made people continue to adore her at the detriment of her business. Her managers called her attention to the true cost of the things she was doing on the business but Adeline would not listen. Then, it happened, the dark morning came when the doors of her business were closed to open no more. Her entire empire had collapsed and gone bankrupt and so where her dreams.

“We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin” says Andre Berthiaume. Just as in Adeline’s case, the mask I refer to is the personality layer that we put on top of our true self. Masks are the edited and decorated versions we prefer to show to the world. What they hide are those parts of us that for whatever reasons, we don’t like or accept.

Most of the times, we don’t even realize the masks are there. One of the first things that happened to Adeline when her dark days came upon her was that her fiancee, the guy who had been the center of her life, loving, caring and a real soulmate became a nightmare overnight. Suddenly he will scold and threaten her. His mask had been removed revealing the real person.

To Adeline as well as for many other people, masks are the protective barrier we put up to deal with an essential human insecurity: that we are not enough as we are. Sometimes we confuse our masks with who we are. Separating the image of who we think we should be from who we want to be can be difficult.

If you want to be authentic you need to look at your masks. You might want to hold onto some and let others go. Regardless, it’s an exercise in self-exploration. Do it gently and with no fixed agenda. Who do you think you are? Lift the mask. Who do you think you are now? Look underneath that as well. You may as well look at the man in the mirror as Michael Jackson puts it in his song.