Sanjeev Jha
Thought Miner… Intellect Inspirer …
Masking – Weapon of Mass Appeal
For the uninitiated, Masking is a process in which an individual “masks” their natural personality to conform to the demands of situations… In other words, overpowers their dominant personality traits in favour of compulsive environs that warrant conducive behaviour.
What is more jittery is people masking their real self, as a habit, even when in the absence of any necessity. People who have trained themselves to such perfection that they themselves have lost touch with their real self. As behavioral transformation is the basic ask of my work deliverable, I wonder how do we ever awaken someone who is pretending to be asleep.
How do you peel off the mask that has fused itself with the facial skin & the cultivated soul of the willful deceiver. What happens when deception becomes a way of life?
In the normal functioning of life, the way we have groomed ourselves from our infancy, we already wear a bouquet of masks…. As an offspring we have a different mask, as a sibling we wear a different mask, as a lover/spouse we wear a different mask, as a parent, we wear a different mask, as an employee we wear a different mask, as a reportee, we wear a different mask, as a manager we wear a different mask, as a friend we wear a different mask, as a colleague we wear a different mask, as a citizen, we wear a different mask… ooof how many masks!!! Who are we really…?
It perhaps has come to a stage, where we don’t reveal ourselves to ourselves anymore… We are increasingly frightened to spend quality time with ourselves… esp in solitude…while we should have been our own most ardent admirer and loved to spend time with ourselves… If we don’t love ourselves enough, how can we expect others to love us…. Even if we have to go for a tea, a smoke, a drink, lunch/dinner, we have become such compulsive social animals that we need some partner to accompany us. Think about it… when was the last that you spent time with yourself… alone.. introspecting on what is happening in your life… where is life taking you… or whether what you have made of yourself and your life, is it bringing you happiness as much as you desired for.
In any case, it is a no-brainer that corporate cultures demand that you mask your real self. Individual behaviours and individuality more often than not usually attracts untold sufferings and troubles… hence individuals start templating themselves into formats that are temporarily favourable and chase public acceptance. And over a period of time the individuality of a person gets deeply buried in the debris of the mountain of various masks that one has created for various occasions and relationships. What had once made you unique, is now a templated ghost of dictated and enforced guidelines. And eventually these created zombies end up talking of individualism, thinking out of box paradoxes and innovative pursuits. And there lies the problem…
Yet the question remains, can an individual ever risk being a unique specimen or develop into dictated templates of themselves. Can we afford to shun our masks ever?
Over various cups of adrak chais, me and my unmasked friend concluded that as a weapon of mass appeal, “masking” merits consideration. With the caveat, that, at least in personal realms and with people who matter, let’s unmask to default settings 😇
Till then… let deception rule your soul….
Sanjeev Jha 
Can we afford to shun our masks ever?
The answer is we are bundled up with masks in this glittering materialistic world…..so straight forward reply is NO
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Hard hitting and seed of many problems!
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