What mask are you wearing today? Will it be just one or will it be several? Did you wear your mom mask this morning while getting the kids off to school, and then switch over to the Office mask, once you got to work? Do you have a mask for your wife or husband, another for your children and relatives? Just how many masks do you wear?

It’s been my experience (and I’m sure many of yours too) that we all wear a good number of different masks. Just the other day I caught my daughter saying something like; “don’t go all Life Coach on me dad!” I assured her she was very lucky I was not a Prison Guard by trade! But the point is I’m just as guilty as anyone in wearing masks (try as I may to not wear them). Do you know someone that could have been arguing with you one minute, and go to answer the phone the very next second and sound sweet as pie? I do. I think many of us have memories of deceptions – perhaps even gut wrenching – change of life sort of deceptions that just would not have been possible without some sort of façade. We are all culpable when it comes to that.

So what do we do about this? Well, for some of us we’ll do nothing. We will be resigned that it is just the way it is and there is no changing it. Besides, the pain of sharing the “real you” can be just too much, and some will never do that again (sad but true). Some of us will try to find our authentic self, which tends to bypass the ego, thereby getting rid of many of our masks. That however can be a long and difficult journey in its self.

What you do with your own masks is up to you, but I recommend that you limit the use of them. You’ve heard it a million times: “the truth shall set you free”. Well, I have to say it… a mask is not the truth – it is the illusion of the truth or a partial truth, and it binds your wings as much as any bold faced lie

Bright blessings ~ Richard