The Five Masks We Hide Behind

It is challenging to be fully yourself in this cancel-culture driven world where it seems you’re one tweet away from ruining your life. So you wear masks to protect yourself from other people’s judgments and you don’t let anyone see the real face behind that mask.

The upcoming holiday of Purim is a special time of year when you can take off your mask and reconnect with your authentic self. We wear costumes on Purim to externalize these inner masks we put on during the rest of the year, and we reflect on how the world is also often hidden behind illusions of coincidence. Purim is a time to break through these masks and illusions and reconnect to the truth behind them.

Here are five masks we hide behind that disconnect us from each other.

1. Mask of Busyness

You may have a super hectic schedule and feel like you have no time for reaching out to others, but sometimes your overfilled days can be a way to protect yourself from the exposure of connecting to people around you. Overachievement and chronic busyness are often masks that allow you to hide from difficult conversations and vulnerable interactions.

Try picking one day a week, perhaps on Shabbat, to take off your mask of busyness and dedicate the day to connecting with your family and friends.

2. Mask of Self-Sufficiency

It feels much safer to not need anyone else. Our culture praises independence and disparages neediness. But this has led to a tragic epidemic of loneliness that grows more each year.

It is normal and healthy to need other people. You’re not meant to stand on your own all of the time. It’s ok to take off the mask of self-sufficiency and ask for help with a problem. It is a move toward greater courage and strength to seek out and build a community that you can both receive from and contribute to.

It may feel safer to rely just on yourself, but isolation is far more harmful than asking for help.

3. Mask of Apathy

There is so much pain and chaos in the world today that it sometimes feels easier to tune out. You may feel like not caring protects you from feeling the grief and the stress of what is happening around you.

But the mask of apathy doesn’t actually protect you from the suffering; instead, it intensifies your own pain by disconnecting you from your real feelings and values. It hurts to care, but it hurts even more to pretend that you don’t.

You don’t need to take on all of the world’s problems just because you allow yourself to feel another’s pain. Many people think that the opposite of love is hate, But the opposite of love is really apathy and indifference. Tune back into the suffering of others, and you will reconnect with your values and beliefs.

4. Mask of Control

One of the ways many people deal with the stress of uncertainty is to try to control everything around them. You may recognize this tendency sometimes in yourself to try to do everything perfectly to the point where you are not only exhausted, but you can’t start or finish anything because you’re not sure how to do it the ‘right’ way. And this mask of control also distances you from the people around you because it makes you less patient and tolerant of mistakes. You may find it hard to forgive others and even harder to forgive yourself when the illusion of control falls apart.

Take off this mask and accept uncertainty because it’s there in every part of life whether you want it or not. Allow yourself and others to make mistakes. Replace unreachable perfectionism with practical ‘good-enoughness.’

5. Mask of Conformity

It is hard to stand out in a crowd. It takes courage to speak up when everyone is silent. It is far easier to go along with what everyone seems to be wearing or doing than to choose your own way. But the mask of conformity is costly.

It distances you from what you really care about and what you actually enjoy doing. It blocks you from dressing in a way that reflects your own values. It robs you of your voice when you need it most. And it creates superficial connections with others because no one has a chance to see who you really are.

Take off the mask and examine your life. Are you choosing your own path or are you following someone else’s?

On Purim, we celebrate the legacy we all inherit from Mordechai and Esther: the courage to speak up and to stand out in a crowd. We celebrate taking off our daily masks and re-discovering the joy of our authentic selves. It is both a sacred time of joy and a meaningful opportunity to find your own path to growth.

The post The Five Masks We Hide Behind appeared first on Aish.com.