Each one of us has at least three persona: the person we think we are. The person others think we are. And the person God knows we are.
I guess most of us have an ideal person in mind who we’d like to be, more or less. Some call it a role model. A success icon, perhaps.
Consciously or not, we pattern our thinking, behavior, values, and appearance on this ideal person. You could probably say we become some sort of a clone. A replica. Variations of the same theme. We mimic the mindset, vocabulary, possessions, habits, even the wardrobe and predilections of the person we admire.
That’s well and good, of course, if we happen to choose the right person, the right model to follow. And if we maintain our distinct personality, preserve our own personal uniqueness, in the process. I think this is the tricky part — that we don’t lose our identity, our authenticity.
Sometimes — consciously or not — we wear masks to hide our flaws, our limitations, our hideous dark side. It’s a tiring exercise — this always wanting to mask our insecurities and hollow pride by being “plastic,” seamlessly synthetic, and prettified by cosmetic surgery.
This reminds me so much of the legendary Kabuki players of Japan. We, too, can wear masks that portray the range of emotions we want to project. We can make exaggerated gestures that transform us into caricatures of the person we’d like to be. In the process, we interact with the world as if everyone were just our audience. Not real people who deserve to interact with our real selves.
So we perform, we connect, only so we can be admired, or at the very least, respected for our craft. Ergo, we diligently hone our performance day after day, sticking to the script in our minds, hiding our true selves behind masks which we think will protect us, beautify us, or hide our shame and unbelievable lack of delight in ourselves.
We become experts at incredible duplicity. Until the audience finally tires of us, hastily collects their things, and heads for home. Leaving us with no audience.
Tell me, what would you be thinking, saying and doing; what would you be wearing — if most everyone you liked or looked up to, just vanished into thin air one day? No more audience. No more reason to impress. No more reason to fabricate a façade. Would that change your performance?
To be authentic is to throw away the mask, once and for all. It means we become real about our strengths and weaknesses. It means we don’t oversell or parade ourselves to be more intelligent, more knowledgeable, more moneyed, more “successful” than we really are.
It means we’re truthful about our position and status in life. It means we don’t exaggerate our importance in anything. It means when we talk with others, we don’t just talk about how great everything is in our lives, how brilliant our kids are, how brilliant WE are because we just closed this huge contract, etc., etc.
It means we also spill the beans on how we made horrendous, stupid mistakes that will take us years to live down. How we just can’t potty train our kids early enough, or how we made a bad decision, how our business isn’t doing well these days.
It means we politely say “Could we go somewhere else I can afford?” when our friends suggest a restaurant that’s out of our budget.
It means we can tell people in the office, “No, I don’t know much about that. I think so-and-so knows a lot more than me, so he’s the best person to send to Geneva.” It means we stop pretending that we know it all, and instead, admit that we don’t know all that much.
What have we got to lose if we admit that we’re not even near-perfect? What have we got to lose if others knew that we’re not as intelligent nor as rich and as successful as they are, or as we’d like to be? What have we got to lose if we’ll never be as beautiful, as accomplished and successful as we’d want to be?
It’s not wrong to have ambitions. We just have to have the right ones. And be truthful about where we are right now.
You might be surprised how people will like you, love you, respect and admire you more if you just gave them a chance to see you as you really are. The Bible says that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.”
We don’t have to be exceptionally brave to be real. We just have to be authentic. Truthful. Humble. We have to let go of our fears — our fear of being rejected, devalued, or ignored.
The secret is this: we should imitate Jesus Christ because He’s the best role model there is. No matter how great or how inferior we think we are, when we imitate Christ, He will give us excellent balance and perspective.
We will then see how wonderful we are — because God loves us. And we will also see how wretched and imperfect we are — but He still loves us.
Because of Christ, we are fearfully and wonderfully made.
