Masquerade a party at which masks and costumes are worn, whether an informal gathering of friends or a formal ball. Masquerade a costume worn to a masquerade. Masquerade a pretense or disguise. I have always found masquerade has to be the most interesting of events. People who are wearing their pretty masks. Some of them plan and simple while other ornate. All of those shiny happy people safely veiled behind plastic masks, their faces carefully covered from one another. So, many masks. Everyone wearing one. . . No one giving it much thought. How so like people to not see the irony in it.
The mask so like life. The masks that we wear every day. The ones that not so obvious. We all wear masks. We pretend to be what people need. The perfect lover, the perfect son, the perfect daughter, the perfect friend so much illusion all around us. Who we are to one person, perhaps, is not who we are to all. We struggle along spinning, dancing, and always hiding. Hiding who we truly are. What we truly think? I submit to you that all of life is a masquerade. The masks are just not as ornate.
Life is a dance. A wild, reckless, carefree dance. One misstep and the music stops. You spin this way and that whirled around as a tornado tossed hither and thither. No one ever stops spinning to consider why we are dancing or to what tune. No the piper plays and like the mouse we follow along. We are like blind little mice with no tails. We dance. The piper sings the tune and we follow along. For if nothing else we are to prideful to see we are not in control of the dance. Someone else is. The world we live in. We have all the people that are around us. They are pushing us always pushing. Become this be that. Don’t stop moving. You must succeed.
And the masks we wear. The oh so pretty masks. Don’t take them off. Don’t show a crack. Someone might exploit it. Everyone wants to be strong. But, everyone is weak. They all want to play the game. Everyone wants to be charge. Everyone wants the power. They have to seize it grasp it. Because in the end we are animals who are fighting for dominance. So, we put on our masks and go to war. We have to win. We have to make people believe we are what they need. So, that they keep us. They will surrender to us, eventually. However, we lose the very core of our being in the process.
So, many masks. I have always worn them. I realized that I had to. I had to be the good child less I be abandoned. I had to be the good girl who obeyed her father less I be hurt. The good sister to protect that, which was most precious to me. I had to play the role of lover to find someone who I could trust. A friend to those who needed someone to listen to them. Who do you want me to be? I can be anything you wish. I can be nothing? I didn’t want to be nothing.
There are those that would say if you detest the game why play? Everyone plays the game. Even, those who claim they do not. They play it by refusing to play. They put on a mask of pretend indifference, while watching the others. No one is without a mask. Everyone has a private mask and a public mask. I have more masks than most I suppose. However, I realized early that I needed them to survive. And more than survive, I could use them. I could manipulate people with my masks. I could use them before they used me. I learned to play the game. The name of the game is greed. Everyone is greedy. Everyone wants something. We pursue love, money, power, truth, or a multitude of other things. No one is without wants. Ever survival is a want. You want to survive. You are perhaps not born with the right to do so. You desire it. So, you fight for it. Like some many others. Life is a fight.
It is a dance with masks where the music never stops. Where if you miss a beat you fall down and are devoured by the wolves.
The only thing I have come to wonder. If you play the game so long what happens when you remove the masks. Are such a thing even possible/ Do we have faces without masks? Or are we given our first one by our parents? Some sort of twisted perversion of what they expect us to be from day one? What if you could strip them off? What would be real? Are any of the masks real? And if so which ones? If you stripped away all of them, would anything be left? However, I am just a dumb blonde what do I know? *Smiles shyly*
