John Powell wrote a book many years ago that is a favorite of mine(How often have you heard that statement!).Again I refer to Mr. Powell's book, Why Am I Afraid To Tell You Who I Am? In the book, he gives the answer: "I am afraid to tell you who I am, because, if I tell you who I am, you may not like me, and it's all that I have." This book was written in 1969, but the human game has not changed.
I came across an intriguing piece not long ago, anonymously written, that echoes exactly what Mr. Powell was saying in his book. I share it here.
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Please Hear What I’m Not Saying
Don’t be fooled by me. Don’t be fooled by the face I wear, for I wear a mask. I wear a thousand masks---masks that I’m afraid to take off. And none of them are me.
Pretending is an art that’s second nature with me. But don’t be fooled, for God’s sake don’t be fooled. I give you the impression that I’m secure, that all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well as without, that confidence is my name, and coolness my game, that the water’s calm, and I’m in command, and that I need no one. But don’t believe me. Please!
My surface may be smooth, but my surface is my mask, my ever-varying and ever-concealing mask. Beneath lies no smugness, no complacence. Beneath dwells the real me in confusion, in fear, in aloneness. But I hide this. I don’t want anybody to know it. I panic at the thought of my weaknesses and fear exposing them. That’s why I frantically create my masks to hide behind. They’re nonchalant, sophisticated facades to help me pretend, to shield me from the glance that knows. But such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only salvation, and I know it. That is, if it’s followed by acceptance, and if it’s followed by love. It’s the only thing that can liberate me from myself, from my own self-built prison walls, from the barriers that I so painstakingly erect. That glance from you is the only thing that assures me of what I can’t assure myself, that I’m really worth something.
But I don’t tell you this. I don’t dare. I am afraid to. I’m afraid you’ll think less of me, that you’ll laugh, and your laugh would kill me. I’m afraid that deep-down I’m nothing, that I’m just no good and you will see this and reject me. So I play my game, my desperate, pretending game with a facade of assurance without and a trembling child within. So begins the parade of masks, the glittering but empty parade of masks, and my life becomes a front. I idly chatter to you in suave tones of surface talk. I tell you everything that’s nothing and nothing of what’s everything, of what’s crying within me. So when I’m going through my routine do not be fooled by what I’m saying. Please listen carefully and try to hear what I’m not saying, hear what I’d like to say, but what I can not say.
I dislike hiding. Honestly. I dislike the superficial game I’m playing, the superficial phony game. I’d really like to be genuine and me. But I need your help, your hand to hold, even though my masks would tell you otherwise.
It will not be easy for you. Long felt inadequacies make my defense strong. The nearer you approach me, the blinder I may strike back. Despite what books say, I am irrational; I fight against the very thing that I cry out for. You wonder who I am. You shouldn’t for I am every man and every woman who wears a mask. Don’t be fooled by me, at least not by the face I wear.
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If someone has coaxed you to come away from your masks, you are indeed, a fortunate person. If there is someone in your life that says, "I love you and accept you for who you are, flaws and all", thank that friend, thank that family member, love that spouse a little deeper for accepting you just as you are. If our inner frailness is ever to be made whole, we have to go through the process of becoming real, not phony or hypocritical. It takes determination. It takes patience. The process is painful, but the end result is being who we were really created to be.
"The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere." ~Anne Morrow Lindbergh
