Masks

Day 84. Masks.

Repeat title but not a repeat performance. I still believe we all hide, we all deceive, we all lie. Hard truths are never easy, and accepting responsibility for the problems we have created is considered failure by most of us. We each have a closet full of masks: some we wear in public, some in private, others when we're alone. Why in the world would we need a mask if its just us? Well, sometimes we're just that embarrassed at our own truths.

We wait all these years to find someone who understands us. Someone who accepts us as we are, someone with a wizard's power to melt stone to sunlight, which can bring us happiness in spite of trials, which can face our dragons in the night, who can transform us into the soul we choose to be. Just yesterday I found that magical someone is the face we see in the mirror: It's us and our homemade masks. Richard Bach: The Bridge Across Forever.

We are all white knights. We are all princesses. We alone are responsible for our own happiness. Nobody can take it from us, and we can't grant it to someone else. No matter the situation, we have created it. We can no more hide from our own reality than we can alter someone else's. Masters of our own fates, captains of our own ships, we alone choose our course. We think we deserve the lives we have now, as good or as bad as they are. We punish ourselves for past wrongs, just knowing that we can't have happiness because of the pain we caused others. We cling to the scraps we find along the way, trying to make a life of the pieces. Surely screwups like us can't have the good things in life, not when we've done so little to deserve better. So we hide behind our masks, pretending to be happy. When inside, we're resigned to whatever we've chosen to accept as our fate.

Having had that beaten into me at an early age, I believed it. For most of my adult life. At some point, I'm still not quite sure when, I realized I was letting someone else decide my fate. And that would never do. If I ever wanted to be happy, to be loved, to be free, I had to start doing that for myself. I had to take control, speak my own truth, and take charge. So often, we think that by accepting what we've been given instead of working for what we want, we'll be happy. We think that we only deserve "this much" happiness, instead of the whole thing. Because we screwed up at some point in the past, we think we have no right to claim anything beautiful ever again. We couldn't be more wrong.

Admitting our mistakes is exactly why we deserve more. We earn happiness. Particularly after our failures. in spite of our failures. There's only ever been one perfect person on this earth, and He gave his soul that we all might have the chance to be born again. Yet we deny that chance. We can't forgive ourselves, how can God possibly forgive us? And without that, how can we ever expect anything truly wonderful to be real? It's just a temporary thing, real happiness can't last. Because we can't possibly deserve it, right?

Nope. We all deserve it. All the happiness. As my friend Scott says, "in this life, or the next." I choose this one. You should too. Keep reading. I'm trying my best. For both of us.

Lesson Eighty Four: Are the things you really want just out of reach, or do you stop yourself because you don't think you deserve them? Do you see your past as something you can never atone for, and accept things instead of creating the life you want? Look at yourself in the mirror, and understand that you choose to wear that mask. Or to take it off.

646 to go...