How Many Faces

How many faces do you own? How many faces have you built? How do you decide which face to wear? I’m sure you know by now, I’m not really talking about actually owning a face or physically building a face or even wearing a face. What I am talking about is the “persona” behind you at any given time. We all have multiples personas at our disposal, you can’t deny that. At any given time, we have our polite face, our public face, our sneaky face, our manipulative face, and among many others, our one true face. Where do all of these faces come from? Why do we need them? Do we need them? Why can’t we trust in our true face one hundred percent of the time? Lots of questions and if you think about them from a personal point of view, it might be easier to understand why everyone, and yes I said everyone, has multiple faces in their personal lives.

You may think you don’t have multiple faces, I say you are wrong. Now, you may think that having multiple faces implies that the alternate reality to your one true face is bad or bad intentioned. That does not have to be a true statement. Even if you believe yourself to be a good person, you can still have multiple faces other people “see.” Inside you may be feeling angered or aggravated, but you put your “happy face” on and enter public. You may be hurting inside or feeling deceived and put on your “public face” so nobody knows your inner pain. These faces help us cope with living in a society. As I have mentioned in other articles, our nature is to be sociable. If we did not have some of these faces, our lives could be forever lived in extreme emotional states, or so we may think. Most of our faces temper the extreme states we can be in personally, but not allow them to affect the society we live in. By society, it can mean something as small as your spouse or family or as big as your local community or work department.

When we leave our solitary existence and enter into a room with other people, we have a choice of which face to put on. Do we allow others to experience our true face, our true feelings, and our true self or do we put on a face that diminishes who we are, filters out the true emotion, and waters down our experiences with others because we are holding back? In the most simplistic means of talking about it, that is what it comes down to. It’s a rational decision. We decide what face to put on at any given moment. How often do you allow your true face to be exposed? Does it make you nervous when others are given the chance to experience the true person you are? Does it make you emotional when you allow others to experience your life without your chosen face on? Do you want to interact with fractional versions of the people within your life? Do you want other people to experience only portions of your true self?

Again, there are lots of questions. Doesn’t it open up a seemingly endless array of them if you truly sit down and think of this from a personal point of view? We all like to think of others, think what others should be doing, or think how others should be acting. But, how often do we turn this inward? How often do we like to challenge who we are? We don’t. Why? Because it’s hard and sometimes the answers are scary. It’s easier to “judge” others than to put ourselves under the microscope. We want others to fit our mold of how we think and not change internally. Sounds a bit selfish does it not? Yes. I’m like that and I’ll bet good money that you are like that. It’s a fact of being human. While we are social creatures, we are also very selfish creatures. The only way to combat our self serving existence is to turn the thought process around to the person you see in the mirror.

That person may not be who or what you thought he or she was. Existence within our world changes us. Even the most steadfast can be changed. Environment, money, power, family, and other stimuli can alter our existence from what we want to be. Our faces we have allow us to walk through life with minimal impact in our social world. Internally, our true face may want to breathe, but our rational mind will not allow it to be seen. We hide who we really are out of fear of rejection more often than not. If we play the part with an appropriate face, maybe we will fit in. Maybe society will accept us. To me, the rational act of placing a face on revolves around what you want the world to think about you. You want the world’s image of you to be a good one (usually). So, you hide your true face and walk through life with only a small portion of your true self exposed.

All the faces I mentioned above (our polite face, our public face, our sneaky face, our manipulative face, and among many others, our one true face) relate to one thing. You want others to think or portray you in a certain manner. Polite, I’m nice, accept me. Public, I’m acceptable, accept me. Sneaky, keep something hidden, accept me. Manipulative, try to make you view me a certain way or do something, accept me. True face, will you accept me? Acceptance in our life is very powerful. It “makes” us do things we don’t agree with. It makes us filter our life to where the world only sees a minor portion of our true person. Acceptance begins within your own mind. From a very young age, we are punished by society for not being accepted. I’m sure you can remember during your school years as a young child how acceptance was golden. I’m sure you can remember yesterday at work when you felt good because you were accepted. Who exactly is being accepted, you, or a version of you? Do you have to remember which face to put on in each circumstance similar to remembering which lie you told to whom?

I have many different faces. I take them off and put them on, rationally. Which face do you think you see when you read my articles? I write from within, this is my true face. Which face do you see when I’m in public? You may not see me. You may see me as I want you to see me. Which face does my wife see? She sees my true face because I trust in her to accept me. Can you trust anyone with your true face? How often do you dare to enter society with your true face on? I try to enter each day with my true face more and more. Eventually, the other faces will begin to collect dust and will not be needed. Can you take that step? Will you allow other people to experience who you really are? Do you have the courage? Can you let go? Trust, yes it has to be earned. But if you aren’t showing who you really are, how do you expect someone to trust you? It’s a two way street. You can’t expect something from someone else when you aren’t playing by the same rules. Throw the faces away. Go forward and join society and your family as the real you and trust that you will be accepted because you are an honest and trustworthy person. Accepted for being your true self is infinitely worth more than acceptance of a “fake” you.