Many of us pretend to be something we are not or fake it to please someone or impress some one else. We may be scared to be who we are in case we are not liked or loved or appreciated for being ourself.
Perhaps few of us have the courage to be genuinely yourself bravely acknowledging how precious and unique we are and then bestowing this gift equally to others.
When we listen or hear we think we know what people are saying perhaps because we want to hear what we want to hear.
To acknowledge the uniqueness of another may be so hard but so enormously rewarding.
Here is a story I came across many moons ago. I hope it resonates with you and you take what meaning you want out of it to live afull and rewarding life. The story is called: ‘Please Hear What I Am Not Saying’ and the author’s name has been lost in the mist of time.
Please Hear what I am not Saying
Don’t be fooled by me. Don’t be fooled by the face I wear. I wear a mask. I wear a thousand masks – masks that I am afraid to take off; and none of them are me.
Pretending is an art that is second nature to me, but don’t be fooled.
For G-d’s sake don’t be fooled. I give the impression that I am secure, that all is sunny and unruffled within me as well as without; that confidence is my name and coolness, my game, that the water is calm and I am in command; and that I need no one. But don’t believe me, please. My surface may seem smooth, but my surface is my mask, my ever varying and ever concealing mask.
Beneath lies no smugness, no complacence. Beneath dwells the real me in confusion, in fear, in aloneness. But I hide that. I don’t want anybody to know it. I panic at the thought of my weakness and the fear of being exposed. That’s why I frantically create a mask to hide behind – a nonchalant, sophisticated façade – to help me pretend, to shield me from the glance that knows. But such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only salvation, and I know it. That is, if it’s followed by acceptance, if it’s followed by love.
It’s the only thing that can liberate me from myself, from my own self-built prison wall, from the barriers I so painstakingly erect. It’s the only thing that will assure me of what I can’t assure myself – that I am really something.
But I don’t tell you this. I don’t dare. I’m afraid to. I’m afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance and love. I’m afraid you’ll think less of me, that you’ll laugh, and your laugh would kill me; I’m afraid that deep down I’m nothing, that I’m just no good and that you will see this and reject me.
So I play my game, my desperate, pretending game, with a façade of assurance without, and a trembling child within.
And so begins the parade of masks, the glittering but empty parade of masks. My life becomes a front. I idly chatter to you in suave tones of surface talk. I tell you everything that is nothing and nothing that is everything, of what is crying inside me. So when I’m going through my routine, do not be fooled by what I am saying.
Please listen carefully and try to hear what I am not saying, what I would like to be able to say, what for survival I need to say, but I cant say.
I dislike hiding, honestly. I dislike the superficial game I am playing, the superficial phoney I am being. I’d like to be really genuine and spontaneous and me. But you’ve got to help me. You’ve got to hold out your hand even when that’s the last thing I seem to want or need. Only you can wipe away from my eyes the blank stare of the breathing dead. Only you can call me into aliveness. Each time you try to understand because you really care, my heart begins to grow wings, very small wings, very feeble wings – but wings.
With your sensitivity and compassion and your power of understanding, you can breathe life into me. I want you to know that. I want you to know how important you are to me. How you can be the creator of the person that is me, if you choose to. Please choose. You can remove the mask, you alone can release me from my lonely prison. So do not pass me by. It will not be easy for you. My long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls. The nearer you approach the blinder I might strike back. Its irrational, but despite what books say about a person, I am irrational. I fight against everything I cry out for.
But I am told that love is stronger than the strongest walls, and in this lies my hope. MY ONLY HOPE. Please try to beat down my wall with firm but gentle hands – for a child is very sensitive, very fearful.
Who am I, you may wonder? I am someone you know very well. For I am every man you meet. I am every woman you meet. I am right in front of you.
Anonymous.
