Social masks are interesting. When I was growing up I always thought they belonged to lame adults in suburbs, the ones that hovered at dinner parties on weekends bragging about their kids academic achievements or their new overpriced car. I always thought that New York by virtue of being filled with so much “young and cool” energy would be divorced from the concept of social masks. We were too busy being alive and trendy to ever succumb to such a bland and meaningless fate.
I’ve gotten older and wiser though, and I realize that we all participate in the game of social masks. Including me. So much of my blog is my attempt to collapse my relationship with my social mask. I don’t understand this impulse within me, but I am publicly exploring it. Sometimes it’s awkward.
New York feels constrictive though. Williamsburg on weekends is like the epitome of the social mask. Everyone is dressed up and walking around. I get people feel confident on weekends, but for some it’s also a show of power as well. The better dressed you are, the happier you look, the more friends you have, the more you are telling the world that you are somehow above the fray of pain. Your life is a yacht of ego and pleasure, floating through the streets of New York City and consuming whatever it lays its eyes on.
Yachts of ego and pleasure exist, but only momentarily. They eventually collapse because they are not sustainable. The reality is no one is above pain and suffering. Our perception is skewed though. We watch instagram influencers trapeze through St Barths in YSL. Meanwhile we eat Sweetgreen under fluorescent lighting in offices filled with disharmonious coworkers. Sometimes we are watching our friends elevate their realities to new and beautiful levels while our lives feel soul crushingly stagnant. We feel like life is a game and we’re the losers.
So what do we do? We up the ante on our social mask. Our instagram photos get better, sexier. We start to play “climb the social ladder” and surround ourselves with the “best” and “finest”. We create an idea of ourselves in our minds that serves as protective mechanism, a way to cope with the immense fragility and vulnerability that we feel.
I don’t hate the social mask, and I don’t hate the people that are attached to them. I was deeply invested in my social mask in my 20s. I think I got lucky though, I had too many problems to justify having a social mask. I also dated someone that had the most beautiful social mask a person could wear and he lived in a painful despair. I guess the combination of the two made me reject the mask and try my best to love myself. It was futile, the mask would never feed me.
a soft death 