Monday, October 29, 2007

Zorro psychology

I've begun discovering more about "masks" that we as people wear. I've known for a while that people (including me) put up these fronts ("Why you frontin', man?") to portray an ideal self, when there may be no truth to it at all, or at most, a very little grain of truth. But I've also been wrestling recently with the idea of the true self and how much we can change it.

My current operating theory is that we can become what we want one of two ways. One way leads to the true self (because it is itself the true self), and the other way leads nowhere, because it is a shortcut. We can become the ideal self to other people by wearing masks. That works fine for a while, and it may work really well for a really long time, but there will come a point where the pressure of pretense is too great, and the ensuing explosion blows off the mask. The better way to become the real ideal is to know or have an idea what you want to become and, having that goal in mind, grow into it.

I characterize it in a very simplistic way: The kid who dreams of being big but doesn't want to wait finds a kid who's smaller than he is and bullies him. The kid with a longer, more healthy view will dream the same dreams, but will eat well, exercise, get plenty of sleep and drink lots of water. He will actually grow into a big person rather than frontin' with a bully mask.

No comments: