The Facade of the Real You

The Façade of the Real You

Last time on random psychology / philosophy / society thing blog post I talked about the Real you. Who you really are? Well this time I’m going to expand on this with how maybe we sometimes don’t want people to see the real you. That we perhaps like to wear a metaphorical mask that hides it away. Why does this façade exist, what are we afraid of?

 

We want to be liked and accepted is the simple answer. This makes a lot of sense. Being alone is something everyone on earth fears at some point. Especially when going somewhere new we all want to make new friends and be accepted. The last thing we want is to be an outcast. Seems simple right? Sadly no. Hiding away the real you is a temporary fix, but it can also be exhausting. To make real friends and be truly comfortable is to be accepted for who you are. Letting out the real you is necessary in order to be happy, nothing is fun about constantly having to keep up the pretence of who you are.

 

You know ‘those people’. Those people who follow everyone else and just say and do what’s popular. The sheep type people who follow the crowd. It’s too be popular of course, but does it work? Kind of, maybe. Okay, they always have a large group of acquaintances and know a lot of people. However people tend to bitch about them behind their back. They don’t make those close friendships that other people do. You know those unpopular people who you say are strange or weird. It stands to reason they have an admittedly small number but very close friends. Which would you prefer?

 

Now I’m not saying this applies in every situation, far from it.  The point is thinking to yourself which you would prefer. I think about my own situation and I could ask my friends but all three of them are busy at the moments so I’m not really sure. It’s easy to say be yourself and you’ll be fine but we all know that isn’t true.

 

It’s almost tragic at times, being yourself can be a terrible thing for your social life. They may be stereotypes but they do exist. It’s fact that certain types of people and certain activities are far more common and popular. That’s not bad against those people, it can just be difficult for other types of people. Hence the façade of who we really are comes in to mask over the personality traits that won’t fit in. How would most people react if you asked about their favourite yu-gi-oh card or favourite piece of classical opera? There’s nothing wrong with these things at all, they’re just not popular. But to fit into the trends you may have to pretend to be a fan of popular music or something less nerdy than yu-gi-oh like Magic the Gathering. It can be a difficult line to tread.

 

So what’s the solution? Is it good to mask your personality in the pursuit of acceptance? I’m not ignorant enough to say you should just be yourself and you’ll find ‘your people’. However I am ignorant enough to say that you should try. After all, it is better to have tried to find your own way than live life as a sheep. Or as per usual when I write these things, you may think I’m full of crap. That would be understandable. Either way have a think, you may enlighten yourself a little and join me for the next psychology / philosophy / society thing blog post thing next week which will hopefully be on Monday. I think it’s a good one.