“I no longer have to wear my mask,” Gleefully my friend to said me.
She works in fashion, outside is always dolled up, one of those women who even wears makeup at the gym, so I was surprised when she said—
“It feels freeing that I’m not wearing any makeup or stilts.” (meaning high heels)
And then she added something really meaningful—
“I’ve gotten so used to looking at my face without makeup now that I like it, and I’m never going back.”
“I just get to be myself now,” she said.
One upside from this
There are of course plenty of downsides, but we’re also seeing things that might change for the better.
Whether women feel more free to wear makeup or not might not be such a big deal, yet what it means for our sense of self really is.
In some ways we’re stripping away the veneer, aren’t we?
Seeing more clearly some of the superfluous things that you can remove and never put back in your life.
And then there’s the other side too.
You can wear any mask you choose
A buddy told me that he loves you can now wear your mask in public.
He said more or less you can get away with wearing anything, so I thought I’d give it a try.
Putting on my favorite mask you see pictured above I went for a run.
Now, I will say, like many things I may have taken it too far wearing this mask.
But I quickly realized he was right.
It’s Halloween every day, you can wear just about anything and no-one even pays attention.
“What is the mask?”
Is a question my buddy who writes on mythology often asks of superheroes.
“Is Batman the mask that Bruce Wayne wears, or is Bruce Wayne the mask Batman uses to conceal his identity?” he says.
See, coz when you think about it, Batman appears as the veneer to Bruce Wayne, but like Superman hiding behind the Clark Kent identity, too Batman is inside Bruce Wayne, isn’t he?
Yet, what behavior does it now unlock in him?
With or without a mask, how are each of them different?
By taking on a different identify, who can you now be?
Whoever you choose to be!
Masks are associated with superheroes as well as bank robbers.
Meaning, apart from the apparent health benefits right now, they are neither good nor bad, but a “device” for shifting one’s identity.
At a deeper level you might see these as “meta-fors” who you choose to be.
Whether my friend chooses to wear makeup or not.
Or you choose to wear an Anonymous Guy Fawkes or Black Panther mask or not.
Every moment you’re choosing the masks that you wear—The identities that you present, and conceal.
And how these alter your ways of being.
What might wearing or taking off a mask mean to you?
btw, this topic of identity is also key to top performance as I wrote about here stepping yourself into the character of The Hulk.