Lucrative masks and labels

Why am I talking about masks and labels?

I do not wear one. 

Let us explore.

Sociology studies man in his social environment. It says that man has many roles to play when he is inhabiting this earth. He acts like a father, son, husband, manager, leader, etc. He is not just one person but many in one. What is this? 

Let me introduce you to Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung and his take on the various roles we play. He says that we are not born as a blank slate where we can write anything. He introduced the concept of archetypes. Archetypes are a universal, inborn eidolon of a person, their behaviors and personalities that ultimately influence their behavior. In short, it is the innate human knowledge that is transferred from our ancestors.

One such archetype is "persona," which means mask. He elaborates, saying that persona is the way we present ourselves to the world, i.e., the innumerable social masks we don among various groups and situations. Over time, we get so stuck in them that we fail to hear ourselves. Let me illustrate it with an example:

When I was working at the school, it was final exam time. A sixth-grade boy came to say he forgot everything and was unable to write the paper. He was anxious and restless, unable to sit and unable to stop saying, 'If I fail, my mother will beat me.' The child belonged to a very reputed family. He said, 'I got up at 4 today and did these all sums with my tuition teacher, but I forgot now. My mother will scold me.' After calming him down, I turned over his question paper and asked him to see which questions he knew. He said I knew this, and he did. Then he said, I know this also, and he did. Thereafter, he attempted the whole paper without any difficulty. 

What I want to show here is that the child is wearing the mask of becoming a scoring student because his mother wants him, not he himself. So, things are not entering his head. The mother wears a mask of authority to make the child improve in his studies. She is hiding behind this mask rather than using her creative way of teaching her child the subject. Every mother who has spent time with her child knows what their preferred way of learning is. This hiding has instilled an insecure and fearful mask in the child. This mask made him panic during the exam. Had he seen her mother trusting him, he would have had a secure feeling that I could do it and would have moved on to the next question without being anxious. When I saw his insecure and fearful mask, I just tried to bring it down so he could see his real self. I talked to him about everything. So he forgot he was writing an exam. Then I turned the exam paper and said, Please look at every question and tell me which one you know. I was building trust in him. He picked out one. He did it, and he was able to solve it. His image improved. So he tried next, and so on. 

Similar to this concept are the labels we use. We are very good at labeling ourselves as well as others. When we label, we restrict ourselves to that boundary only. For example,

When I was in my first profession, I started believing that was my ultimate life. With that labeling, I stopped thinking about achieving bigger or greater, even though I had time and capabilities as well. I realized when things went wrong that I had to change. When I went to the new job, I had much time. So I thought to write essays, which I was good at in my school days. The topic was very attractive. When I sat to write, I had much difficulty even writing a paragraph, and the essay was 1000 words. That made me realize the effect of labeling oneself. With much effort and practice, I regained my lost skill and taste of writing, just like the boy I mentioned above. 

I can show so many of them operating around us right now. We want to become what our parents said. This is also a hiding because I am denying myself to be someone my parents chose. We say, "I will marry whom my parents choose," which is another hiding we seek because we failed to express what "I" want. 

We all have these masks and labels that we have been using unknowingly to hide our weaknesses and restrict ourselves from becoming who we are. It is high time now to discover them within ourselves and work on them to know ourselves a little better. 

I would close my discussion with this video because in it, the person talks about building our own character that people observe in us and remember and discuss even when we are not in the room. For example, we still remember the inquisitive character of Newton, who observed how an apple fell down and discovered gravitational force. Posthmus also remembers his character and discusses it to encourage ourselves and others. 

 Video on character building.

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