The Masks We Must Wear
When a boy talks to his mother, he wears a mask. He doesn’t always reveal everything about himself if he is smart. Certainly, he doesn’t talk in the same way as when he talks to his friends in the playground. And his mother certainly doesn’t talk to him in the same way she does when she talks to her husband. She wears yet a third mask when she talks as a member of the PTA group. In our daily life, we wear a mask. Sometimes several masks in the same day. But always, we wear a mask. No one reveals everything about themselves without a mask to filter it.
Well, a few do, but they are generally regarded as weird, crazy, dangerous, subversive, or some combination of those.
So, I’m writing this here to be frank about something. I wear a mask. And unlike most people, I am not only aware that I wear a mask, but I revel in it (Send in the court jesters!). I am me. The character I play in SL is me. The character I play in RL is me. They are two very different people; they are, in a sense, masks I wear. But even though they are different people, they are both me.