All the World’s Your Stage

    
    “All the world's a stage,” Shakespeare penned the beginning of his play As You Like It. Also known as The Seven Ages of Man, this was his commentary on the various roles and masks we wear throughout our lives. “All the men and women are merely players,” Shakespeare continued. “They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts... “

    In ancient Greece, stage actors wore masks to ensure the audience could clearly see their facial expressions. This allowed spectators to distinguish between characters and made the story's theme—comedy or tragedy—clear to them.

The pressure to conform to societal expectations is a reality we all face. This is reflected in the popularity of masquerade balls and costume parties, where people find freedom behind a mask and behave differently than their usual selves.

We learn survival skills as children, practicing how to present ourselves to gain affirmation and approval from family, church, and society. In recent years, face-to-face communication has retreated behind our smartphones, changing how we connect. These skills we accept as our identity. And we will fight fiercely protect less someone get a peek behind the mask at our true identity.

Today, we craft electronic personas on social media instead of physical masks. Yet, under stress or opportunity, our true identity emerges. Getting behind the wheel of a one-ton SUV often reveals our authentic character.

A woman in a black SUV had been tailgating another driver who was carefully following the speed limit on a residential street. Glancing in his rearview mirror, he could see that the woman was very distressed.

When the light at the intersection turned yellow, instead of accelerating through, he chose to stop at the crosswalk where people were waiting to cross. Now, the woman was pounding on her steering wheel, yelling, and blasting her horn.

The woman was in mid-rant when a police officer approached from the driver's side of her car and tapped on the window. After exchanging words with the officer, she was ordered to exit her car and place her hands on the hood.

The woman was handcuffed and given a chauffeured ride to the local police station. Despite her protests of innocence, she was searched, fingerprinted, photographed, and put in a holding cell. She waited in the cell for two hours until her release. She retrieved her personal belongings at the booking desk, where the arresting officer awaited her.

"I'm very sorry for this mistake, ma’am," he said. "I had been following you for a while – you were honking your horn, gesturing at the driver in front of you, and cursing up a blue streak.

“While checking your car tag, I noticed the 'Choose Life' license plate holder, the 'What Would Jesus Do' and 'Follow Me to Sunday School' bumper stickers, and the chrome-plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk."

He paused for a moment, "Naturally, I assumed you had stolen the car."

Behind the Mask

To illustrate this idea with some figures, a consumer study conducted by Deloitte revealed that Americans checked their smartphones 8 billion times daily in 2014. Individuals aged eighteen to twenty-four looked at their phones an average of 74 times per day. Americans aged 25 to 34 checked their devices 50 times daily, while those aged 35 and older checked their devices about 35 times a day.

The electronic masks we wear on social media allow that wounded, angry part of us to flow through our fingers on the keyboard.

However, apart from online personas, many of the God-squad people I know have become proficient at deception and duplicity in secular and religious settings. Having grown up in a church environment, I experienced the tremendous pressure to wear masks of piety and spirituality to remain a member in good standing of the God-squad. Some of us have been conditioned to maintain our masks, layering false humility in church rituals and performances.

Church rituals teach us how to wear religious masks, performing for an audience of fellow believers. We create masks for family, friends, and colleagues, shaping our service to match the religious persona expected of us, especially if we take on ministry roles.

Given all these tendencies to mask ourselves, we might ask: what does it take to give us the courage to venture out into the world with genuineness?

Over the years, I have had the privilege of rubbing elbows with some impressive servants of God. However, what I truly admired was their consistent character. It was not always displayed in the glare of performance; instead, I observed it most during their daily interactions with family, often in the crucible of pain and disappointment.

As I See It, these men and women’s identities were revealed when they thought no one was watching... but we were.

 (Please leave a comment and your own experience.)

 

(An excerpt from my upcoming book) 

BREAKTHROUGH: Finding Your God-Given Identity And Enjoying The Life.