HIDING FROM REALITY

No really, who are you beneath the job, the nice house, the fancy car and the beautiful family. Strip all of that away and what is truly left? How about we start with who am I and maybe my own transparency can help you open up the truest and most vulnerable parts of you. The you that even you don’t like to think about.

Me. I am insecure. I am self-righteous. I can be controlling and manipulative. I once was obsessed with what everyone thought about me, so much so that I would basically put on a mask and create another person for me to show up to the world as. I never felt like I was good enough or that my contribution was the same as everyone else.

I am also very positive, although I believe this is somewhat of a defense mechanism to not allow myself to be stopped but the ebbs and flows of life. Deep down I have learned how to cope with my short comings, understand my perspective, and now I am able to judge myself from a position of love and understanding growth. As I am inevitably hard on myself, I have learned to give myself grace because even the strongest of people have to take rest.

I am me and that makes me different than everyone else alive. My environment has shaped me in some positive and negative ways, inherited some positive and some negative traits from my parents, friends and significant others. I am a culmination of thousands and thousands of successes and mistakes that have created this reality. The one thing that I am no longer participating in is running away from said reality, acting as if it is gets better by me ignoring the truth of who I am and who I’ve been.

We have created a full infrastructure we call life that allows us to hide from our realty. Along with hiding from reality, we are excellent at hiding parts of ourselves from the world. We are especially good at creating tools that allow us to falsify our current thinking and give the world a “reality” that we dictate to be “real.” From makeup to plastic surgery to social media, we have our ways of hiding.

I think there are two parts to this answer introspective understanding an extrospective. Let’s first deal with the extrospective because this is the most common way for us to recognize the catalyst for the process. Extrospectively, we take huge pockets of time trying to hide our true selves from people. A male example of this is being a toxic, tough guy. The guy that wants everyone around him to totally believe that he is not afraid of anything. What he is essentially doing is trying to make himself look more suitable and appealing in the “protection” category so that he can institute a level of dominance to be a better “catch”.

On the female side, the example we might use is the use of filters or makeup once removed lol. Filters can be used to edify parts of you just as makeup would be used in the same right. The problem arises when that filter is no longer something that elevates a look and it just becomes “the” look. It totally makes the person look like a different person, to potentially look younger or more viable to be cherished for physical attributes. We are in an extremely competitive dating environment and every that gives you an edge will be used.

Here’s the scary part. I don’t think that the true issue is the way we show up to the world, but rather it is based out of the way we try to hide from ourselves.

Lying to everyone around you is one thing, but lying and continuing to lie to yourself are definitive signs of ceding one’s emotional control. I’ve said it a million times: the only thing you can control on this earth is your own personal energy. Part of controlling your personal energy is controlling how you inevitably feel about others, but also ultimately how you feel about yourself.

The issue in its truist form, and a huge reason I feel like we are having the racial, sexual and interpersonal issue we are having, is because we hate to see ourselves as we actually are. Yet, if I am not happy for me, how in the world could I be happy for you? If looking internally causes me pain – the inevitable product of needing to address the traumas that have created my reality – and I flee from them, how could I walk around in love given my own innermost turmoil?

Everyone is insecure about something. At varying levels we are each unsure, frustrated, and or even guilty. The shame we carry for who we have been or what we have done often times does not grant us the ability to forgive or stop judging ourselves. We allow moments to become indelible identity traits. These moments, in turn, tend to fuel almost innate responses of being dismissive, impulsive, and defensive and amount to an earnest and adamant denial that makes us incapable of seeing ourselves and in the end, have us believing the lie that we have told the world about our own self.

We don’t take an inventory of who we actually are and forgive ourselves for our shortcomings. Then, in order to move on, we hold these “moments” as if we are damaged goods.

I believe the bottom line is not feeling like we are “enough.” Our self-value in recent history has not been predicated upon who we are, but predicated on what we have to offer. And so we are scraping to be able to offer a version of ourselves that is competitive, complete, and consistent. We want so badly to be a version that we can be proud of in the broader world’s pernicious assessment.

It would behoove us to learn how to value and have pride in the version of us that is trying, admitting faults, learning from mistakes and legitimately trying to grow. We have to change how we measure and our measurements of being “whole” needs to be an inside out vs an outside in.

Don t just look good. Feel good. And the only way to feel good is to actively do the internal work and although it will be the hardest thing you have ever had to do, you will also no longer be hiding from your reality.