How genuine are we when we interact with other people? What about the times we interact with ourselves? How do we behave? Why so? Is it because of the social rules? Is it different from one set of people to another? Which of those behaviors is more like us and which is just a façade?
I’ve noticed that there aspects of myself I let out in the open to some of my friends, while with others I keep them shut with some little fear that they’ll find out. And it’s not even an conscious effort. I just do it. The first time I’ve noticed this was when those two sets of friends were in the same room. I was kind of stuck because I didn’t know how to behave. 404 – brain not found.
When I encountered this I started to wonder if I’m a superficial human being. The answer I came up with was no, because I wasn’t doing this consciously. So there must be another explanation. The idea behind this is that we behave differently based on the “rules” that apply in that situation. With closer friends, there are different “rules” compared to acquaintances. One of these rules is how comfortable we are with them. The more comfortable we are, the more “parts” of ourselves we let out in the open because the fear of being judged is lower. This applies because we spend more time with certain people so they get to see more parts of us then other people so when we f*ck something up, we won’t get judged based on that because they know we are not like that. When we’re in public with people we barely know or we don’t know at all and we f*ck something up, they judge us based on that particular action or behavior. Yes, it’s not right, but that’s how most of us work.
Of course, there are people that do it on purpose. They say to someone that they love potatoes if that person loves it too, and they say to someone else that they hate potatoes if that someone else hates it too. They probably do it because one of their core beliefs is to be liked by everybody. The question is, at the end of the day, do they know which is real? Because if they do, they’ll create a stronger connection to that person with which is on the same page.
If we think about it, each mask is like a computer program. It can be Paint and we show a sketchy side, either an Antivirus and nothing goes through, or Windows, the whole operating system that can show you everything if you are the right user.
What do you think about this? Which program do you put up front?