365 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN
By Ángela López
Be
yourself! This is undoubtedly one of the most powerful exhortations today,
although for many it has become just another cliché. Interestingly, despite the call for
originality, the truth is that when something goes outside the conventional
parameters, people get scared. This is
why some of us prefer to pretend or hide our true selves, so that we don't feel
rejected, ridiculed or even abused emotionally and/or physically. Nowadays,
lying is like a protective shield against the darts of antipathy and public
scorn, because if you show yourself as you are, there will be a lot of birds of
prey ready to devour your self-esteem.
Paradoxically, we admire great figures of the seventh art, when in
reality each one of us has played an infinite number of roles to avoid losing
friends, getting ambitious jobs or maintaining idyllic loves. Hypocrisy has become a matter of
survival, no longer even an option.
A famous
enemy of Batman is known as Two-Face,
but... How many do we have? We have learned how to develop various identities
without being declared mentally unbalanced.
For example, some must look smart enough to be accepted in certain
social circles, but also, have learned not to shine too brightly so that others
are not intimidated. Others condemn
racism and xenophobia publicly so as not to raise suspicions about their
darkest prejudices. Undoubtedly, lies
and falsehoods are the mask and disguise that give eternal life to the
creepiest Halloween. What most people see about us is what we want them to see,
not who we really are. And maybe we think we're too clever to cheat, but the
truth is, the pillow always reminds us how bogged down our souls are.
How hard it
is for us to be ourselves! It seems that it is not enough to pollute the seas
and the Earth, we also have the habit of filling our minds with garbage. We become saturated with pernicious thoughts,
absurd beliefs, incorrect neuro-associations that, in the end, only infest our
heads with cockroaches. Cynically, we
ask children not to cheat on their tests, ah! But as adults, we desperately
seek to graduate with honors from the school of trickery. Judging certain moral behaviors of others
during the day, and then secretly doing the same at night, is what I call
seeking alibis to get away from society's accusatory lens, or to reduce it in a
word, hypocrisy. Undoubtedly, the more we judge what people do or don't do, the
more we make clear who we are.
By this I do not mean that we do not have the right to have a private life, on the contrary, it is necessary to have our own space as independent beings. What I mean is that hypocrisy and that game of showing what we are not, destroys us and others sooner or later. Instead of feeling exhausted all the time because we are changing our face and our clothes, we should let the falsehood fade away through a deep inner cleansing. We should abandon this habit of compulsively accumulating hatred for ourselves and the world. Disguise would not be necessary if we had a heart overflowing with love and respect. That is why it is urgent to take the broom, not to fly like a witch's night, but to remove all that dirties the mind. Let's stop this eternal trick or treat!
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