Long before the global pandemic and on every day of the calendar including October 31st, you awake in the morning already wearing the mask you’ve decided to spend your life peering through. Like a method actor, you’re (literally) walking around in the skin of the role you’ve immersed yourself in, playing your part as you believe it ought to be scripted, reacting to the other actors who too are fulfilling the roles they’ve chosen to play.
It can be fun at times.
But after a while, you forget who you were before the mask—who you were meant to be.
Even if you love the roles you play—wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, CEO etc—we all, without realizing it, don a false face in order to meet and be accepted by societal, familial and cultural expectations.
We’ve learned throughout our lives to conform. To be quiet if we’re told we’re too loud. To stifle our emotions if we’ve been told we’re too much. To ____ so we can fit in.
We live behind the masks of our personalities—our learned or conditioned selves–and spend our lives trying to maintain the standards we believe we need to live up to. We strive to meet the expectations we think others want from us, afraid of being judged while also judging ourselves.
It’s no wonder that so many people today feel unfulfilled.
Instead of playing a role, what if you decided to re-write the script?
What if, as the author of your next chapter, you simply cast yourself as your true self?
Wouldn’t that be easier? Wouldn’t that feel better?
Fulfillment comes when you get to be who you really are – fully and freely. …when you get to live as the Buddhists say, from your original face.
As a Love Note from your Soul says:
Whenever you lack confidence, think “I am a tree.”
Just like the leaves, you evolve with life’s seasons; there’s a time to bud, blossom, become, share your fruit, let go and rest.
And you’re not meant to be anything but a tree because the seed from which you sprouted was not meant to sprout a flower.
Repeat after me: “I am a tree.”
If you’re a tree pretending to be a flower, you will be treated as a flower. As such, you, as the tree, will be disappointed. You’ll judge yourself (and be judged) as too tall, too thick, having branches instead of petals, attracting birds instead of bees, having brown bark instead of orange petals.
But if you, a tree, saw yourself as a tree—how your trunk is exactly as it should be—how your leaves bud, bloom and turn a beautiful shade of red in the fall—how you provide shelter for squirrels, birds and racoons, and provide cooling shade on a hot summer day; all things tree lovers appreciate you for and all things a flower cannot do or be, you would let go of trying to be a flower and accept yourself as a perfect tree.
Ahhh, fulfillment.
Where are you a tree wearing the mask of a flower?
How can you accept you are a tree so you can remove the false mask you’re peering through and see through the eyes of your original face?
