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Do People Change?
Posted: February 22, 2012 in Unmaskd Tales, what makes us tickTags: change, life, tale, tales, unmaskd
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Let’s face it, most of us have faked something in life. Feelings, expertise, attention, indifference — there’s so many things you can fake. Yes, that thing too. Sometimes faking is necessary, sometimes it’s the most natural thing to do and sometimes it’s even fun. But doing it for too long is a bad idea. It will turn into poison.
Very few things will wear you down as much as constant mask wearing. Pretending to be someone you’re not may be ok for a while, but at some point tiredness kicks in. Regardless of what people think of you, you know you’re a fake. You can fool others, but can’t fool yourself. You feel hollow inside. You want to take that real feeling or lack of interest — whatever it is that you’re hiding — and shove it into people’s faces. You want them to see the real you, regardless of the implications.
But the major danger isn’t tiredness. It’s that once you wear a mask for too long you may become it. Instead of being the genuine you, you start investing more and more time and effort into keeping your mask believable. And at some point you’re no longer living your own life. You’re living the life of a mask you’ve invented. And that’s a pretty pathetic way to live.
P.S. I have no doubt this post will be misinterpreted by many readers.
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Waking Up in a New World
Posted: February 1, 2012 in a lonely journey, what makes us tickTags: life
Imagine this situation. A man wakes up in a world he knows nothing about. It’s full of objects he’s never seen before. It’s full of people he’s never met before.
He doesn’t speak the language they speak. In fact, he doesn’t even understand the very basic concepts they rely upon. He knows nothing about their society, history or traditions. He is completely socially handicapped and wouldn’t survive in their world without help for more than a day. For some reason, he also faces enormous physical challenges. He is much, much weaker than people surrounding him. He can hardly move. He can hardly see. He can’t speak a word even when he tries imitating others. He’s completely at their mercy.
And on top of all that he knows nothing about his past. He has no idea where came from. He doesn’t know his own name. He is clueless of who he really is. He has no past and his future is completely uncertain.
Luckily for him, the people surrounding him are nice. They feed him. They keep him warm. They help him become stronger. They also teach him their language, introduce him to the basics of their society, and make him feel more at home. They even give him a new name.
Days go by, and he becomes more and more accustomed to living in their world. Eventually he starts thinking about it as his own world. Occasionally he still wonders who he really is, how he ended up in their world and what his purpose in life had been. But the world around him keeps him busy. There’s so much to learn to become a fully functional member in that extremely complex society. So many things, customs and traditions to understand. So many facts to memorize. So many tiny goals to accomplish. And eventually he stops wondering about his real identity. He’s happy with the one his new world has given to him. He’s just too busy to wonder about things like this. And so he gives up without even realizing this. His happiness is no longer about finding out his real purpose or who he really is. It’s about succeeding in the world he lives in.
It could have been a plot for a sci-fi novel. But it isn’t. This is the story of everyone of us. You. Me. Countless others.
Whether it’s sad or happy, it’s up to you to decide.
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The Trick of Alternation
Posted: January 31, 2012 in a lonely journey, motivationTags: commitment, motivation
Nothing worthy can be achieved overnight. There’s a long road to walk. And to walk that road you need fuel. Something to keep you brain and soul committed. A good option is obsession — it’ll get you far. Unfortunately you can be obsessed over anything only for so long. At some point obsession wears off. That’s how our brains are wired — we seek novelty. On the other hand, pure cold logic won’t get you far either. It lacks fire. It lacks passion. It’s simply too cold too keep you going for too long.
The trick is in the alternation. Set your eyes on the goal. Be sure it’s the right one. Make sure you have passion — better yet feel that you’re obsessed. Then go. But once you feel that your passion is no longer as strong as it used to be, let your cold logic kick in. Forget emotions. Just go. Just keep going, step after step, mile after mile, even if you’re completely numb. And then, as you get closer and closer to your goal, your passion will come back. Your cold calculated monotonous movement toward the goal will get you to the results that will refuel your obsession — and it will come back ten time stronger.
Alternation. Has it ever worked for you?
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This is probably going to be the most cryptic of my posts so far, and coming from someone who calls himself Unmaskd, that’s saying a lot. But I want to capture and share the feelings of this moment, and for better or for worse, this blog has become my best outlet for this part of my consciousness.
Exactly 365 days from now a bet will come to fruition. It’s a strange bet, made over twenty years ago between two best friends. One friend has likely forgotten it by now. The second friend has never let it go, for it has been very dear to his heart. Despite that, throughout the years he has barely acted on winning it. Instead, he’s been alternating between powerful efforts with impressive results, half-ass attempts and long stretches of well-camouflaged procrastination.
Getting closer and closer to the date that he’d set himself back in his childhood, he realized that unless he does something drastic about it, he going to fall flat on his not so childish face. And so, in the last attempt to win that bet, he made another one — this time with himself. That other bet was simple, pretty much black and white, with no room left for self-deception.
And then strange things started happening. Things that typically happen in lousy written Hallmark channel made-for-TV movies. All of a sudden, his past started coming alive, mixing with his present and shaping his future. People he had not seen in years started popping up unexpectedly in his life, reminding him about his old successes and stirring memories of his decades old aspirations. His friends started reminding him about his ambitions — without having a slightest idea what he had been driving himself through. And goals he almost had given up on started to look real.
And on top everything else, the idea of his own mortality — something he had been always well aware of — suddenly sunk in, bringing in sadness, but also filling every moment of his life with meaning and clarity. Life remained the same on the surface, and yet had changed completely.
And all the masks he had been wearing started merging into one…
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Biting the Bullet and Facing the Music
Posted: December 8, 2011 in a lonely journey, what makes us tickTags: unmaskd
Life is full of tough choices. Some are tough to make. Others are tough to live with. But the hardest ones are those that we avoid making — sometimes for years. You keep dancing around a choice like this, pretending it’s not there, but deep in your heart you are fully aware of its existence. And one day you realize that unless your stop the lulling music and face that hard, bloody painful choice, you’ll spend the rest of your life wondering what would’ve been like to make it. You know that once you make this choice, there will be no way back. You’ll be walking down the path leading you to the truth — and that truth may turn out to be truly ugly. But not facing it means living your life a coward. And such a life isn’t worth much, no matter how shiny it may look to others.
I’ve been dancing around a choice like this for my entire adult life. Now my time is running out. It’s always been, but now it has gotten to the point where not making the choice means giving up. So I’m making it. There’s no way back. There’s just a path to walk. And at the end of it lies the truth. Whether ugly or beautiful, it is there and I’ll see it pretty soon.
I’m going to be busier than I’ve ever been, so I’ll be out for a while. So I wanted to stop by and tell everyone who cares that I haven’t forgotten about any of you. I appreciate all the messages you’ve sent to me while I was out and all the kind words you’ve said. This means a lot to me. And I’m stopping by to say “later”, not to bid farewell. I don’t know when is “later” is going to be, but I plan to be back.
I can only smile at all the fresh rumors and speculations related to my identity. People claiming to know who I am, don’t understand the irony of their claims. I, myself, don’t know who I am. But I’m about to find out. It’s so much easier to live believing you’re a genius who failed to realize his potential, than knowing that you are simply a mediocrity with groundless aspirations. But I’d rather die knowing that I gave it all and failed, than spend my life living a sweet comforting lie.
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There are very few people in every generation who have the level of talent, will and desire to change the world for the better that Steve Jobs had. He changed lives in ways that go way beyond technology. The biggest tribute to his influence is not the amount of iPods sold or the size of the iPhone market or even the price of Apple’s stock. It’s the amount of people whose lives he touched and made better — often without them realizing this.
The technologies he created or helped create, the devices he made popular, the ideas he made widespread — they have been touching our lives in ways that go way beyond holding a phone or using a Mac. He showed how much a single man can do in his life. He showed that nothing is impossible. He showed that if you can dream something up you can make it real, no matter how crazy it may sound.
He died a legend, because he lived a legend.
