The Theater of Daily Life

A mask is essentially a theatrical prop, a tool that allows an actor to transform and become a character, in order to create art that communicates with an audience. On the greatest of all stages – everyday life – a member of society is invited to play different roles, and in order to adapt to those roles, we use various kinds of masks – ones that simultaneously conceal and (paradoxically) reveal. Metaphorically speaking, the face becomes a mask; we rarely present ourselves to others in full, but most often through a mask that covers certain aspects of our personality.

Just as we “put up a facade” in order to hide what we do not want others to see, so do internal masks serve to conceal those parts of ourselves that we are unwilling to acknowledge even to ourselves. However, the choice of a particular mask always reveals something – it can bring to the surface aspects of our personality that would otherwise remain hidden.

Masks inevitably raise the question of their relationship to the self, especially in the context of our striving to “become what we are”.

Speaking of an “authentic self” as something fixed, inflexible, and undiscovered, waiting to be revealed, means misunderstanding the nature of identity. Masks are inevitable and useful – not as deception, but as a way of being. Identity is not a static entity. The danger is not in wearing a mask, but in forgetting that it is a mask at all. When a role becomes inseparable from who we are, we remain trapped in a character which, unlike literary characters, is most likely not meant to last forever. A fictional character is a symbol, a bearer of a destiny that educates and illuminates human character for the reader. The path of a human being “of flesh and blood”, their formation and their significance in the micro and macro cosmos is incomparably more thorny. There is one reason – the thorns actually painfully pierce our feet.

The face we cover has never been singular, nor is it necessary to “uncover” it. The many faces, masks, what we call “I” must be made conscious and navigated through the lens of freedom. When we focus too much on this “I”, believing it to be a solid, unchanging essence, we lose sight of everything that surrounds us and makes us whole beings. Thoughts, emotions, beliefs – all that we appropriate as part of ourselves – are in constant motion and change as parts of a larger reality interacting with the external world.

True strength lies in the ability to recognize ourselves and to move through life with the awareness that at every moment we can change, because we are not fixed forms, but ever-changing currents of existence.