The year was 333 BC, and history will remember this battle hereafter. The great warrior had a deep vacuum in his feelings. It was a couple of years that he had not seen his mother. He felt lonely and empty inside but shouldered strong, bloody brave, and did bloodshed on the battlefield. Yes of course, you guessed it correctly. We are talking about Alexander the Great. Historians have written that in Alexander’s childhood, he never had a good time with his father. Also, his mother did not care much other than his achievements. At every battle, he had to prove to his family that he was great and a conqueror.
But according to his weird actions, we can assume that he had childhood problems with the inner self, especially related to family affection. In Issus, he had a great first battle with his enemy Darius, and Darius ran away from the battlefield and left all his family members. Alexander did not want to execute Darius’s mother, Sisygambis, and kept her alive. According to ancient battle rules, the winner used to kill the enemy once the battle is over.
Nevertheless, Alexander treated Darius’s mother with the utmost respect and started calling her a “mother”. Alexander went on to win many battles after this incident. In the coming years, Alexander the Great took care of Darius’s mother and allowed his servants to take care of Darius’s mother as well. Thus, Sisygambis could fill Alexander’s void of family validation and the need for a family feeling.
In the same way, we act as Alexander the great in our outer world, but deep inside, we need those deep family validation problems to persist, which creates self validation-related issues and we can safely call it as Mask.
But why do we seek self-validation with family?
As part of our childhood, we experienced love, and we sought attention. We did many things that our parents did not like. There were uncomfortable incidents that had happened, and we made mistakes that our parents never expected from us in the first place. Our parents had certain expectations which we could not fulfill. Slowly we had lost receiving love and attention as part of those mistakes that we made. We tried to fulfill what our parents wanted in the first place. This part of self was never comfortable with our actual self. We created the Mask, which we had mentioned earlier,and the mask was required to meet the needs of our family and the people whom we love. So we have a mask on ourselves, and we see everyone through this mask.We also want people to see us through the Mask.
We feel that the Mask protects us and provides self-validation.
However, as and when we grow, we see a conflict between the Mask we had created and the actual self. This conflict creates self-doubt in ourselves. We feel that we are fake through this Mask, and it is tough for us to remove it and express who we are. We need constant affirmations from this authentic inner self to function with the outside world. For Alexander, he had a mask for his family’s needs so that he can conquer the outside world. The caring, fake Mask protected Darius’s mother as well. Otherwise, how would you explain a conqueror killed thousands of people but protected the enemy’s mother.
When we have the Mask, we discount recognition and genuine praise.
Since we are wearing the Mask, we never are ourselves. Our achievements look small, and we don’t feel good even though we conquered the world. We want more, and we try to achieve more to satisfy the Mask. This inner self constantly tells us that we are not enough and “I am not enough.” because we wear the Mask all the time. Our achievements look vague, and we could see our achievements with a blurred image through the Mask. Even genuine praise and appreciation do not matter to us. We need everyone to like us at the same time; we feel that we are fake inside.
The Mask commands us that we need to look and act wisely.
We strive to look smart with the things we want to learn and seek the skills we don’t need to seek. We are doing it for our created Mask and not for our true self. Our inner self is not connected when we try to make any decision. All we do is the Mask’s work, which wants fame, family, friend, and everyone’s recognition. We pick up the tasks to satisfy someone, and we do the things to get credit from someone. This constant battle of satisfying someone and looking smart creates enough stress, anxiety, and psychological experience inside us. We never and cannot let go of this Mask. So we need to deduct and break this Mask into two comfortable layers.
But how about we see the mask with two layers
In our two-layer Mask, we have the learning mask and the performance mask. There is a constant battle between these two masks. When we wear the learning mask, we perceive our life experience as learning. We can learn from our mistakes and move further. Everything and anything is a learning experience for us, and we forget the bad past and move on.
But through the performance mask layer, mistakes are costly
We need to pay for those mistakes. We cannot live with mistakes when we use the performance layer mask. To live peacefully, we need to pay the price for those mistakes. When we wear the performance layer of the Mask, we should never make any mistakes at all. Life becomes very complex, and there is no freedom to make silly mistakes.
Don’t we need a performance layer mask in this competitive world?
Of course, we need the performance layer mask in this competitive world. The layer is very much in need at the nuclear power plants. We cannot a mistake in an atomic power plant and learn from it. We will not alive for any learning experience. The errors are costly and the changes are impossible for a reverse. But the rest of the time, we can live with the learning mask, and it does not affect us much other than hurting few egos here and there and hurting few Olympic gold medals. We can make mistakes and pretend to create test scenarios for our errors and learn from them. Making mistakes and living with those mistakes are part of the reality. When we want to be true to ourselves, we need to embrace the mistakes that we make. Also, we need to forgive ourselves for those mistakes to move on and achieve more in the future. When we learn, we make mistakes. When we make mistakes, we tend to remember.
Summary:
In this article, we have seen three aspects of our inner world experience. The first part is understanding the inner world and the mask we had created as part of our childhood. The second part is that we constantly have conflict with our inner self and the mask that we made for ourselves. Finally, the third part is picking the learning mask and treating life as a learning experience rather than the performance experience. In the learning experience, We can live a better life, resolve our conflicts and solve childhood problems. So let’s start every day with an excellent learning mindset.