“The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.” – Arthur Schopenhauer.
And why is that, you ask? Less energy as you age, which makes holding up the mask more fatiguing. Which leads us to a cost-benefit analysis of pretending to be something we’re not.
Given this some thought. Personally, I prefer to think of the whole idea as a scraping away many layers of paint to get to the fine seasoned hardwood underneath.
Maybe old folks just surrender. What’s the point? What’s the point of maintaining a facade?? How well did that work for you? And, my goodness, how tough to maintain that fake falsehood??
Which raises another question – why wear a mask to begin with?? Wearing team jerseys. Like you can feel a part of the money and celebrity by becoming a cog in the herd.
Stop promoting someone else’s brand. Next you’ll be giving your tax dollars to bunch of billionaires to build stadia you can’t visit because ticket prices are too high. That would be crazy. Create your own brand. Become your own hero.
The old man had a philosophy. You can’t always be who you want to be but you can always be who you are. Just have to be ready for the pain that comes along like a box of stone serpents. Snakes may be alive, maybe not. May be poisonous, maybe not.
To be obviously, completely honest, if you are going to wear a mask and you are serious, lifetime serious, start about when you turn thirteen. Before! Start before, for sure. Twelve basically the last true year for most of them. Thirteen, you grow boobs over a long weekend, thirteen you come back to school six inches taller. Voices change, girls are practically grown, at least when they are not acting like space aliens with nail polish or unicorns who never fart. As Grandma always used to say, shit becomes a total cluster fuck about the time you turn thirteen. I think we can all agree.
Then they tell you it’s gonna be two or three years more of this, then four more years just like that, only worse. Then if you bust your ass and work all summer and get real lucky, another four more years. At least then, there’ll be sex and drugs and booze and oh, crap….
She’s pregnant, she’s not pregnant, you’re married, you’re not married, they’re shooting at you, they’re not shooting at you, you gotta get a job, get a job, you don’t got a job, money and no money. She cheats on you, still don’t hit her. Find a wallet full of fresh twenties, give it to the first cop you see. Let him steal the cash.
The thing to remember. That’s all normal. That’s all just being a human animal.
That’s life.
If you fear who you really are, change.
Drop the mask.