We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.
--Kurt Vonnegut
Today's photo accompanying the quote is of a very elaborate mask. We all wear them in our many potential roles--parent, employee, employer, spouse, student, customer, teenager, artist, activist, caretaker, retiree, athlete, and so on. We get to choose in any given moment what the pretend role is, and that's simply life as we know it.
The troublesome place of pretending that I witness so much of is perfectionism. There's a 12-Step saying about that: "perfectionism is the purest form of self-abuse." It's rampant in parenting--the idea that I have to be a perfect parent and my children, therefore, have to be perfect. It's insidious. It's crazy-making. It contributes to the alarming suicide rate. Certainly we want the best for our children, and that's allowing them to be who they are, "warts and all."
Living in integrity, to me, is keeping the mask-wearing down to a minimum, or at least wearing a "see-through" one. It's treating every single person, no matter what his/her apparent status, with the same respect and consideration. That's not necessarily an easy practice, but it is certainly a worthwhile goal.
Gratefully free to choose,
Leta
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