Safest Place To Hide...

Humans. We are such weird creatures.

You know what they say about people changing over time? How things will become different as the years go by?

I don't really think there's a change at all. After all, developmental specialists say that our personalities are largely complete by the time we are six, and the adage that old habits die hard still holds true.

So what's the cause? Why is it that you can never completely know a person, even after many years?

My tutorial today inspired me to write about this. The tutorial talked about bereavement - coping with the death of someone or something close to you.

A couple of tute mates shared their stories and cried, and our tutorial was cut short because of that. Interestingly, they are the ones who seemed to be the most happy and carefree of the bunch.

Which brings me to masks and shells...

Everyone puts on masks and shells in their daily life. It's like make up. Some are really, really thick while some are just glancing dabs. Some are done very well, so much so that it makes them hard to detect. Most importantly, they all serve to make us look better - at least on the outside.

We all have secrets. Be they things that we have wrongfully committed in the past, traumatic events that we have been through and not want to talk about or simply information about ourselves that we are not ready to share.

And this is why nobody can know another person absolutely. Because we will always withhold some knowledge from others. What we tell our parents might not be what we tell our siblings, or our best friends, or our partners - and vice versa. No single person in our lives, except for ourselves, knows everything about us; that is just the way things work.

There's nothing wrong with hiding behind masks and keeping secrets. We can't always seem grumpy and depressed after all; nor can we live a life that has no measure of privacy.

So we accept that, and expect people to accept us, even if we are keeping things and being somewhat fake before them.

Amazingly, people do accept us despite knowing all that; and I think it is one of the wonders of being a human. It's the capacity to accept people for who they are, even though you know you're not getting the full picture. It is a risk of course, but could anyone live without taking that risk? A life of solitude and isolation is a short one.

But look through your facades and mysterious ways some times. Review them, critique them. See if some masks can be peel and some secrets revealed; and of course, if there's anything new that you would like to keep to yourself.

Don't pigeonhole yourself too much. Make friends, talk to them, listen to them. Express yourself. You want to find your hopes and dreams for living in the world; not just merely the safest place to hide.