The Personality Mask

If I were to tell you that at all times you are wearing a mask, and that quite often even you are not aware of what is underneath, what would you say?

                A concept first introduced to me by a friend, I think very few people are aware of the fact that they rarely come clean to anyone, and it can take huge amounts of time with a person before you are willing to take it off. The mask I talk of is the face we put on, grow into, and become, around other people. Few of us, if any, are willing to show what we are really like for fear of lack of acceptance, and as a result we mould ourselves into something that we aren’t. If people could only show themselves for what they really are, then we’d end up with happier friendships, fewer failed relationships and fewer unhappy people pretending to be something we’re not.

Why is it so difficult? I think that in the current world too many people are scared of being different, and so we try and pretend that we aren’t. So if we want to get rid of the mask, then people need to be aware that it exists. People create multiple personas and try to co-exist, much like schizophrenics do. A person will examine how the people they exist alongside act, and then try to balance their own personality alongside the others to improve relationships; is this a good thing? People’s opinion will vary of course, and while the original person is still visible beneath the mask, but the longer you spend with someone, hiding under the mask, the more you become somebody else, and the less of yourself remains.

Classic example’s which are built into the mask; are musical taste, sporting interest, and ways of spending free time. If someone has a music collection mainly based around pop music, then joins a new group of friends, and they listen to rock music, then the one person will probably start to incorporate more of this music into their library, regardless of how much they actually enjoy listening to it. Or if someone ritually follows football and then makes friend with a large group of people who are uninterested, then the football will often phase out of theirlife. This is a shame really. We all know how boring life would be without any differences.

To remove the mask requires great trust in a person, something which is reduced by the fact that neither of you really knows what the other is really like, and I suspect that people who feel less accepted tend to build up a thicker mask, a vicious circle because if they feel less “in” with the group, then they will be less trusting of what will happen when the mask is removed. If we were more open with each other about how we feel, then we could develop much stronger bonds, among friends. At the moment there is just too much strain placed on being part of the crowd, and until people learn to accept that they have different traits, strong friendships are harder to form.

I think in reality, as we get older the mask does start to come off, and we become more willing to be ourselves, though again, the people you reveal yourself too, will have known you the longest.

If you can relate even slightly to this post, then tomorrow try lowering the mask a bit, and showing yourself a bit more, you never know you might find you like the freedom to be yourself....

The Musical Walls, and yes it takes a while to get there...

A subject which has interested me for a long time now, and I think that many people will consider it to be utter rubbish, and yet still I choose to push on...There are many different types of music in the modern world and, in my eyes at least, most of them utter rubbish,To name but a few of the most popular genres at the moment, we have: Pop, Rock, Blues and Rap. All of these are obviously popular but extremely different, so how is it that we can group all of these together under one term “music.” Each has its own followers and, dare I say it, in some case worshippers, Ozzy Osborne springs to mind... but anyway, where was I - I did warn of waffle when I named the blog, so if you’re bored already, quit now, I’m just warming up.

The separate genres all sell in the same shop and are grouped under the term music, so why is it that it is towards heretical to follow heavy metal and a pop band? The only answer I can come up with is peer pressure. People are ashamed to be multi cultural, which is, at the end of the day, what this comes down too. For many years people who were born in, say, India, have struggled against both sides to keep their private/family life separate from their social life, if someone is living in a white dominant area, then it can be difficult to fit in, and this is the same, granted on a less important level. It is none the less true that the same problems are evident. If an entire social group wastes away listening to 50cent talking at a microphone, then it is unlikely a member of said group of friends will discover the joy of hearing Ian Gillan screaming out Child In Time to the masses - not that I am even slightly biased, you understand. As such people rarely enjoy multiple genres of “music,” and so the walls developing between fans of different genres continue to grow and thicken.

It is part of human nature to set up a group of friends where you can feel secure, and I think this is part of the problem - to ask "can't we all just agree?" is obviously silly, we are different and that's fair enough, but I don’t see why it has to be such a crime to enjoy multiple styles; just quickly flicking over my library I find genres jump out suggesting uncommonly broad taste: Alternative, Heavy Metal, Comedy, Pop, Reggae and Blues. Over the last 50 years, human rights and equality have been steadily growing in importance, and have seen the ending, or at least a serious decrease in racism, sexism... and yet nobody seems to have noticed that a huge barrier among people of essentially the same backgrounds (e.g. Caucasian, middle class, moderately wealthy.) is caused by differing musical tastes, and that we could reduce the aggression, which sadly does exist, by lowering the walls between fanbases, and making it more normal for people to have a more eclectic taste than is acceptable in today's world.