The Masquerade|Make-Believe No Longer a Game but a Game Changer

Remember when you played make-believe with your best friend? We played dress-up wearing our mom’s shoes and clothing, even her favorite lipstick, we dressed up for tea parties, costume parties, and Halloween. Perhaps, you put on your dad’s ties and wore his sport coat. It was a time when we were real but pretended to be someone else. The masquerade was a fantasy. But what happens when we grow up and continue playing games, lost in illusion? 

WE BECOME THE MASK WE WEAR

Intuition guides us, and when we disregard the internal communiqué, we move further from our natural compass, far from where the truth resides. It can be a recipe for disaster especially when we place all the unnecessary and unnatural ingredients together. Only to end up with a toxic mix intoxicating the mind and poisoning the soul. This leads to a lifetime of questioning our reality, whereby truth becomes stranger than fiction. Seriously, we can’t make this stuff up. We get stuck with the wrong people, working in the wrong places, living wrong, and carrying on as if none of it matters. 

But it does matter. Especially as it pertains to one’s health and happiness. Who you are, who you hang out with, where you live, work, and play matters a great deal more than you think. For some reason, we think it’s ok to live a superficial life with shallow friends, loving insincere people, hanging out with those who dislike us, while working in unhealthy settings. Is the person’s reflection in the mirror genuine or are we projecting what we think everyone expects to see? Who are we, really?

LOST IN A MASQUERADE

There’s more to us than just our physical being, for within we hold the gift of spirit. Who someone believes we are may differ from who we truly are. This truth will often contradict how others see us. A fine line exists between what we see and what we don’t, which usually is how we feel. A minister once said, “Don’t go leaning into your emotion, basing everything on how you feel.” Wait a minute… why not lean into the emotion? There is a reason we feel the way we do because there’s something more to the story. Personally, I wouldn’t dismiss this feeling or intuitive moment. The key is to have control over the emotion, while learning to tap into intuition when need be.

Have you ever felt somewhat uncomfortable, anxious, and tense in someone’s presence? Perhaps we initially met these relationships with an open heart which eventually turned to doubt. When trust no longer exists or when it’s broken, it’s hard to return to a place of confidence. 

As children, we always accepted, trusted, and believed everyone. However, when we grew up, things changed because we experience those who always have the tendency to wear masks masquerading as someone other than themselves. How do we deal with this? For starters, forgiveness is important. Then you have to ask yourself how important the relationship is to you. Sometimes we stay and other times we simply have to move on. Let’s just say, if we resolve our differences with those lost in playing pretend… pretending to love, pretending to care, it will be difficult. The relationship which masquerades as sincere will more often than not push us further away from the closeness we desire.