My Space

Long time back while searching for some good quality images and artwork on internet I came across a masterpiece. From there on it always represented my image on any profile I hooked online. It was just its quality and depth of expression that caught my attention all along. Some people responded to it as the masked man while the others found it closer to a comic character in the Batman series. Just the other day one of my friend dropped an inquisitive message asking me what that image stood for. Since he was one of those genuine guys who actually wouldn’t have bothered to throw that question at me until he would have been truly were looking for an answer; it was time I gave it a thought myself.

I spent a minute in solitude trying to introspect what possibly could that image stand for. There was definitely something more than the artwork that captivated my attention despite everyone around judging it as one of the weirdest images they had come across. Within no time I gathered my thoughts and drew the conclusion. I realized that someone had appropriately termed it as the Masked Man. I believe that it was the image of a concealed perception of every common man, an aspect of the personality that remains inside him or is not freely exposed to the people around him. One can take the liberty of comparing it to dual personality on subtle grounds.

The life of every human can be broadly said to be governed on two lines: one, what he desires and second, what he ultimately is destined to accept. There maybe occasions when the two paths would merge into one, while there would be moments when they would retain their individual identity. On such junctures he might fall under circumstances where he would want to do things but for some inevitable rational reasons it wouldn’t be possible for him to take a stand he believes in. He would have to move ahead with a masquerade and hope the two paths would cross in the near future. Call that masquerade a mask of pretense that he needs to sport considering the gravity of circumstances.

In a different scenario there are people whom you cannot judge by their actions and appearance. They might be completely opposite to how we perceive them as. It’s only with time and some effort that we get exposed to their hidden or unseen segments. I am yet to come across somebody who would qualify to posses a crystal clear personality. People behave accordingly in different situations; there would be numerous instances throughout the day when one would have to change their stance, their perception and their behavior with what the situation demands. They might have to interact with people whom they detest or land up in scenarios they’re not comfortable in, but yet again for some pre-defined rational and practical logics they would have to surrender their true selves and portray a side called for. Term this act of portrayal as another process to mask ourselves.

In another situation some people nurture their diverse side in isolation with a fear of it not being accepted. In some extreme cases the experiences give birth to a disorder that is termed as Split Personality. In my opinion we all cater to an extremely mild side of this disorder in our day to day lives. The only factor drawing a demarcation is the fact that one is in complete senses and control in one scenario, while it’s the opposite in the other. By and large we all put on a mask to hide or portray an image we want others to perceive, not enabling them to get exposed to what lies beneath the cover. For some reasons it might cause discomfort to the others. Each one of us needs a space of our own, to detach ourselves from the worldly norms and for a while be what we want to be and in an attempt we yet again alter our personalities to strike a balance with between our desires and the gravity of what is expected from us.

I was ultimately able to make some more sense out of the picture that represented me all this long and at the same time relating to the face of a common man. I am not very sure if someone who has a glance at the picture would be able to relate it to the words above, but then isn’t it all about our perception :)